Nightmare
by notmanos
Summary: (Circa season 2) Jo joins Sam and Dean in searching for her mother, who goes missing on a succubus hunt. But the thing their facing is even worse than they bargained for, and they find themselves trapped.
1. Undone

N.B.: I always wanted to write a story with Ellen and Jo in it. So here it is.

* * *

 _ **1 – Undone**_

 _Now_

"Pick one," the yellow eyed demon said.

Sam tried his bonds again, but he was just screwed. They were plastic zip ties, so tight they were cutting into his flesh. He couldn't break out of them or slip them off. The chair also seemed nailed to the floor, which was a weird but smart detail that he had to figure the yellow eyed demon would not overlook. He seemed to always be organized.

"Sam," he said, and touched his face. Sam jerked his head aside, and from the broad grin that split his face, that was exactly the reaction he was hoping to get. "I'm going to count to three. If you haven't picked by then, I'm gonna kill them both."

"I pick me," he insisted.

The yellow eyed demon shook his head, his smile never faltering. "If I wanted you dead, Sam, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Three …"

Sam's mind raced, but there was no way out of this. He didn't trust him to keep his word at all. This fucker was responsible for Jess's death, Mom's, probably Dad's too. But he believed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he would kill them both. He might anyway.

"… two …"

Sam could feel tears of frustration and rage gathering in his eyes. Goddamn it. He was going to kill this monster. He had no idea how right now, but he was going to find a way out of this, and he was going to kill him. He'd die bloody and screaming.

"Dean," Sam finally said, squeezing his eyes shut. He knew, if Dean was here, this was what he'd tell him to do. But it still felt like he'd just slit his own throat, and reached down and pulled out his own guts through the hole.

"What was that?" the yellow eyed demon said. He could hear the gloating in his voice.

"Dean. I'm gonna kill you, you son of a bitch!" he roared, opening his eyes and trying to lunge out of the chair. But the ropes held, and he did nothing.

The yellow eyed demon laughed, and gestured to the two big demons behind him, who left the room. Presumably to kill Dean. "Was that so hard, Sammy? And you know what makes it extra special? Your Daddy died to save Dean. So now his death was absolutely worthless. Isn't that great?"

Sam seethed, blinking away tears, and trying very hard to remember to breathe. He was going to figure out a way to kill the yellow eyed bastard, if it was the last thing he ever did.

* * *

 _Then_

Even though it was kind of early, they decided to check in at the Roadhouse and let Ellen know they finally put the Brownsville poltergeist to rest. It wasn't easy either. Dean was hoping to get a drink to kill the ache in his head. He could probably use a Band-Aid too; blood kept dripping into his eyes.

They weren't the first hunters to try it, but they were the first to be successful. The problem with this poltergeist was it was as an old lady murdered in a very cluttered house. Today she'd be called a hoarder, but back then it was simply chalked up to eccentricity. She'd been cremated, so there was no body to burn. She was attached to an object in her super cluttered home. But what? Dean had suggested they burn the whole place down, just to be sure, but apparently that had been tried before, and only made the poltergeist angrier. (Also, she was able to extinguish the fire. She was one crafty ghost.) But what object out of the thousands left – the ones other hunters didn't destroy – was the one keeping her here?

Sammy did some hard core research, and finally figured it out. When she was a young woman, she got engaged before her fiance went off to fight in World War Two. He never came home. Her engagement ring had been burned first thing by other hunters, but nothing happened. Because it was the wrong object.

Up in the attic, buried under a whole bunch of dusty shit, was an even dustier wedding dress. Technically she never wore it, unless trying it on counted, or maybe she Miss Haversham-ed for a few years there, wearing it when no one else was around. But it was the dress that kept her bound to this plane. They had to fight their way up two stories of house and get into the attic, and find that goddamn dress, and while they prepared for it as best they could, that old lady was one mean bitch. They were both fairly lucky to make it out alive, and they had the injuries to prove it.

Considering how early it was, Dean wasn't surprised to find they were the only car in the Harvelle's Roadhouse parking lot, but wasn't there always at least one car here? Maybe it was around back.

The front door was unlocked, which was something, but inside it seemed empty. Ash wasn't even passed out anywhere. Before Dean could say anything, Jo came out of the back room, carrying out a box of pretzels. "I'm glad you – what the hell happened to you two? Did you get hit by a bus?"

Dean wiped the blood out of his eyes, while Sam limped over to the nearest bar stool and collapsed on it. "Brownsville poltergeist," Sam said.

"We ganked that bitch," Dean added proudly, finding another stool to sit on.

"Really?" She put the box own behind the bar, and came back up with a first aid kit, which she gave to Dean. "Wow, I didn't think she was ever going away."

"For a moment, I didn't think so either," Sam admitted.

"Oh ye of little faith." Dean cracked open the first aid kit, and asked Jo, "Can I have a beer?"

She stared at him. "It's eleven in the morning."

"Yeah, and?"

She rolled her eyes, and reached for a beer. She just gave him a bottle, unopened, which suited him just fine. But first, he took out some antiseptic wipes and butterfly bandages, and moved over towards Sam. He wiped the cut on the side of his face until Sam twisted away and grabbed his hand. "Dude, I'm an adult. I can do it myself."

"Fine, do it." He gave him the bandages, and left Sam to it. Sometimes Dean slipped and fell into his old caretaker role without meaning to, especially now that he had Dad's last words rattling around his head. (He couldn't have really meant kill him, could he? He still refused to believe that.)

When Dean moved back to his stool, Jo was giving him a weird look. He didn't know how to interpret it, so he didn't bother. He just opened the cap on his beer and took a serious swallow to clear the dust out of his throat.

"I'm actually kinda glad you guys are here," Jo said, leaning over the bar and pressing a clean rag to the cut on Dean's head. He took the towel from her and kept it pressed there. "I might need your help."

"What's going on?" Sam asked, clumsily bandaging the cut on his face. It was hard to do without a mirror.

She sighed. "It's my Mom. I think she's missing."

Dean tried to imagine something grabbing Ellen without getting its face caved in, and couldn't. "Are you sure about that?"

"Okay, so, this old friend of my Mom's, Carlos, went to a place called Cedar River to hunt down a rogue succubus. She got a weird phone call from him, and thought he might need some help, so she went to go check on him, and told me she'd be back by nightfall. That was last night. Not only is she not back yet, but she's not answering her phone. She wouldn't stay this long out of contact, and she certainly wouldn't let me run this place by myself."

"Succubuses are real things?" Dean suddenly imagined some sexy beast sucking out his life force – or other things – while he slept, and it seemed like there were worse ways to die. "Why don't we get cases like that?"

Sam sighed, apparently knowing what he was thinking. "They're not … they're grotesque creatures. Don't believe porn."

"And their victims aren't just men," Jo added. "A lot of the mythology around them is bullshit. They're basically just an energy vampire, but without the charm."

"Do you think it could have gotten Ellen, and this Carlos guy?" Sam asked.

Jo shook her head and frowned. "I wouldn't think so. Carlos has killed succubus before, and it's hard to imagine anything getting the jump on my Mom."

Dean nodded. "Tell me about it."

Jo gave him a weird look again. What? It was true. She just shook her head at him, and went on. "Cedar River is only a few hours away. I was thinking about going there myself, but if you guys are game, we can all go."

"Your mom would kill us if we took you," Dean said.

She scowled. "My Mom might be in trouble. Do you really think I'm just gonna sit here?"

He didn't want to admit it, but she had a point. If it were his mother, not even Hell or high water could keep him away. Dean looked down at his beer and took another gulp. These days, he couldn't seem to drink enough to shut his mind off. He really wished he could.

"Do you have the case file?" Sam asked.

Jo looked behind the counter until she found a beige folder, which she slapped on the bar. "Don't know how that helps."

"What kills a succubus?" Dean asked, using his faint reflection in the beer bottle to slap a bandage on his cut, which actually needed a few. It was a bigger gash than he thought. But the old broad did throw him through a wall and through a cabinet, and tried to drop a chandelier on him, so he was probably lucky he didn't have a concussion.

"Silver blade washed in holy water."

Dean finally finished fiddling with the bandages. Probably the best he could do for now. Might have to Super Glue it closed later. "Well, we got those."

Sam was flipping through the folder, and Dean couldn't tell what he was thinking. "Five people died in weird ways. One sleepwalked in front of a truck, another went on a rampage inside a grocery store, another jumped off their roof claiming they were being chased by their dead brother … how is this a succubus?"

Jo had moved farther down the bar. She had taken off her bar apron, and was currently selecting knives from a piece of tooled leather. Girl liked her knives. "They don't just kill you in your sleep, although that's the usual method. They can cause waking sleep states, and make people do weird shit. Usually weird, harmful shit, that inevitably ends in their death."

"So they're like demonic Ambien?" Dean asked. Now Sam frowned at him. What? How was that not true?

Jo shrugged, as she slipped a couple of silver knives in the pockets of her jeans. "Kinda, I guess."

"How do they attack?" Sam asked.

"Well, one part of the mythology's true. They only prey on the sleeping."

Dean peeled off part of the beer label with his fingernail as he considered that. He noticed he had blood caked under his nails. "Okay, so, as long as Ellen didn't take a nap, how could the succubus have gotten to her?"

Jo shrugged on a brown leather jacket that seemed one size too big for her, and pulled her long blonde hair back into a ponytail, snapping on a rubber band that seemingly came from nowhere. "That's what we're going to hafta find out." She grabbed a rifle from underneath the bar, and held it in her arms like a sleeping kitten.

Dean had to give Jo credit. She didn't dick around.


	2. You Walk Alone

_**2 – You Walk Alone**_

Although Sam did wonder about Dean driving so soon after being thrown through several walls and items of furniture, not even counting the beer, he figured Dean had driven while in worse condition. Besides, he'd never risk damaging the Impala.

Jo sat in the back, loaded for bear and tense, while Sam rode shotgun and flipped through the succubus file. Luckily succubuses (succubi?) were rare, because they were so sneaky and so deadly. They could also blend into shadows, making them all but invisible at night. Your best bet was to catch them during the day, but even then they preferred staying in dark places where they were almost impossible to see: sewer tunnels, fresh graves, abandoned warehouses, root cellars and basements. Darkness was their friend.

So what circumstances would lead to an experienced hunter and Ellen – who wasn't exactly a newbie – being caught by one of these things? It was hard to imagine. Sam tried to imagine scenarios where this might occur, but as far as he could tell, catching one unaware was totally doable, especially if it was a smart succubus. But two? How would that occur? Again, their victims had to be asleep, and both Carlos and Ellen would know better than to sleep anywhere in their territory. Knocked out? But who would knock them out? Was the succubus working with a creature more mobile in the daytime? They weren't known to work with anyone. Succubus were solitary creatures, keeping to their own territories, not unlike tigers.

"Any ideas?" Dean asked, guessing that Sam was trying to make sense of this.

"Not yet." Sam glanced in the rearview mirror, and saw Jo looking at them both. Her expression was inscrutable, but he could see lines at the corner of her eyes, in the tension of her jaw. She was more concerned about Ellen than she was letting on. "Ash have any ideas on where the succubus might be staying?"

"Go to the last page. He circled some possible locations."

He did, and she was right. But there were a lot of possible locations circled – a sewer tunnel, an abandoned lumber mill, an entire block labeled " _Basement Alley"_ – and Ash had written in the margins ' _there might be other places, this is a succubus playground'_. It also looked like he spilled a little beer on it. "I don't suppose you know which locations Carlos had already checked out, or where Ellen was going?"

"No."

"I'm kinda surprised she went," Dean said, speaking for the both of them. "I didn't think she was an active hunter."

Jo shifted in her seat. "She's not really. It's pretty rare. But Carlos is a special friend of hers."

"Special, as in ..?" Dean made a gesture with his fist that Sam considered, at best, completely tacky.

Jo gave him a dirty look, but Dean either didn't know or didn't care. "Yes. No. I mean, they used to be, but … Mom gave up on ever dating hunters. He's just a friend now."

"Well, hard to blame her for that," Dean said. For some reason, Sam was surprised by that response.

"Yeah. But Carlos was really nice. I hope he's okay."

"Maybe we'll get lucky and find out they killed the succubus and just ran off to Vegas for the weekend," Dean said, with forced confidence. Even he didn't believe it, but clearly he was hoping Jo would. From the look on her face, she didn't.

Sam went through the files again, hoping something would jump out at him. A missed clue, an obviously wrong assumption, something … but Ash knew his stuff, and Sam couldn't poke holes in it. These did seem like succubus attacks. There was no obvious commonality among the victims, save for living in the same town. The victims varied across ages, races, genders, and socioeconomic status, although there was only one woman among the victims, and the other four were men. None seemed connected in any way. "I hate to admit it, but I'm not sure where we should start."

Dean glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "The motels should be stop one, right?"

"What alias was he using?" Sam looked over his shoulder at Jo.

Jo shrugged. "Don't ask me. I'm not even sure of his middle name."

"What about your Mom?" Dean asked. "Would she use one?"

"Why would she check in? But if she did, she'd use Ellen Ripley or Kara Thrace."

"Nice," Dean replied, smiling. "I'd use those myself. If I was a woman."

Jo was staring at the back of Dean's head like he just pulled off his face and revealed he was a large lizard.

"Should it bother me that you've thought about this?" Sam asked.

"Shut up. They're awesome."

Sam actually couldn't argue with that, so he didn't. But why did he feel like they were all missing something? It was infuriating, because on paper, there was nothing wrong. All bases covered, all boxes ticked. So the only thing telling him something was wrong was in his gut. Dean might believe him, and might worry it was more of Sam's "freak thing" coming out, but he'd believe him all the same. He didn't know if Jo would, or if he wanted to tell her.

He noticed her in the rearview, still looking at Dean, although her expression had softened considerably. She still had a thing for him, didn't she? It was kind of unfair how so many women who really should have known better went for Dean. Sam honestly thought he would have gotten more accustomed to that over the years, but nope, he hadn't. The only saving grace – although it was also kind of a heartbreaker – was Dean saw Jo as a kid, and therefore had no romantic interest in her. That, and he was afraid Ellen would beat his ass if he laid a hand on her daughter, and Sam bet that was one hundred percent accurate. You got on Ellen's bad side at your own peril.

Cedar River was a kind of unremarkable place, a town like the hundreds of towns that he and Dean had seen over their lifetimes. There was a slow homogenization that Sam had witnessed growing up, where towns that used to be distinct started losing their edges, becoming something like everything else. It had good points, in that you always knew where you could pick up a semi-decent burger or an emergency chainsaw, but the loss of identity was a big price to pay. He sometimes thought if he ever retired – if he lived long enough to even think about such a thing – he could probably write a book about the subject. Not that anyone would be interested in reading it.

Dean pulled in at the first motel they came to, and Sam let him and Jo check the front office to see if either Ripley or Starbuck was on the registry, while Sam tried to figure out what was bothering him, and how he could put it into words.

And that was when the vision hit.

It was like a lightning bolt of a migraine, and he got little to no warning. Sometimes he'd get this pinprick pain in his head a couple seconds before it came on, but never in enough time to prepare himself for it. Was there any preparing for what felt like a baseball bat full of nails slamming into your exposed, raw frontal lobes?

And while the pain sizzled through his nerves, making him slump against the car door, he saw images in him mind –

\- blood in a sink, dribbling red on white porcelain, and the sound of screaming in another room, gunshots, and then he was suddenly in the aisle of a store, where he saw people laying prone and bleeding on the bright waxed floor. He saw at the head of the aisle a kid, maybe twenty at the oldest, waving around a pistol, and shouting something that Sam couldn't quite make out, but his eyes … holy shit, what was wrong with his eyes … -

\- and the visions stopped and released him, with a new surge of pain. It was different from the initial pain of the vision, but in a truly odd way. Whereas the vision occurring came with a sharp pain, it exited with a dull one, that thudded like an overly loud bass somewhere behind his forehead. Sam slumped forward, and felt something warm pattering on his hand. He wasn't surprised to find he was bleeding from the nose.

He tilted his head back, pinching his nostrils off to keep the blood in, as Dean and Jo came back from the manager's office. Dean opened the door and got in, saying, "At least we know Ellen's not here, but – holy shit, are you okay?"

Sam stared at him, judging from the horror on his brother's face he must not have looked great. Jo looked on from the back, and gasped. "Are you all right?" she asked. "What happened?"

"He gets these nosebleeds sometimes," Dean lied. He knew what it meant, and he wasn't cluing in Jo. Sam was grateful for that. He could hardly explain this shit to himself. How he'd explain it to someone else – and a would be hunter on top of that – was beyond him.

"We need to go to the Home Stop right now," Sam said.

Dean nodded, and started the car. "Why do we need to go a hardware store in a hurry?" Jo asked.

"Trust us," Dean said, gunning the Impala out of the parking lot. "We have our reasons."

She looked between them suspiciously, and handed Sam some fast food napkins she found in the back seat, which he put over his nose. The red sunk in, turning the white paper to a slow, bright crimson. "What is going on? There's something you're not telling me." She gasped, signaling she'd figured it out for herself. "This is your psychic thing, isn't it?"

Dean gave him a look that signaled he was throwing this in Sam's court. Confirming it or not was all up to him. Sam decided he might as well be truthful, as it would make things easier. "Yeah, it was."

"Do they always give you nosebleeds?"

"No. Just sometimes."

"So what did you see?" Dean asked.

"There's a guy flipping out at the hardware store, shooting people, but he's bleeding from the eyes, and they're covered with this semi-opaque white film. You could just about see the dark circles of pupils and irises beneath them, but just barely. There's no way he can see, but he's hitting all his targets."

"What the fuck ..?" Jo said, encapsulating Sam's feelings pretty well.

"Is that something succubuses do?" Dean asked.

Sam and Jo both shook there heads. "I've never heard of it." Sam added.

"So what could do something like that?"

Sam and Jo exchanged glances in the rearview, and they just confirmed that they both didn't know. At least they were on the same page. "No idea," Sam said. He was pretty sure his nose had finally stopped bleeding, but a dull residual ache lingered in his head. "We're gonna hafta ask him, aren't we?"

Dean gave him a look that screamed _'how do we fucking do that, genius'_ , but he didn't say it, because he didn't have to. They had had years to work out their non-verbal shorthand.

Home Stop was a big box hardware store, and the lot was a madhouse when they got there. People were flooding out of the store, and all trying to leave at the same time. Another delayed vision? Goddamn it, why? He used to get ones with more warning.

Dean parked the car hastily, and told Jo," Stay here."

"Fuck that," she replied, kicking open the back door and getting out, rifle held high.

There was no time to argue, so they didn't. Dean broke through the crowd running from the store, clearing a path for them, and before they were even in the doors, Sam could hear gunshots and yelling. Someone – the shooter, he bet – was screaming about zombies. Was that what he thought he saw?

Since the store was huge, you'd think it would be hard to find the guy, but all they had to do was follow the shouting to the source, and eventually the bodies. Sam checked on all the injure people he found as he ran through the aisles, and confirmed one dead. Two others were bleeding badly, but might make it. He had a bad feeling about the third.

They'd split up, Sam and Jo going one way, while Dean went another, and he sincerely hoped Dean got his message about taking the guy alive. It would be easy to take him out, but they had questions and needed answers. Assuming they could break through whatever had happened to him, he was their best bet right now.

The guy was currently at an aisle junction, which was a huge open space. Great for shooting at him, not good for anything else. A couple of people were laying face down, in pools of their own blood. Sam couldn't tell if they were breathing or not. "What do we do?" Jo asked. "Should I shoot him in the leg?"

Sam shook his head, and decided to go for broke. He stood up, and shouted, "There are no zombies! You're shooting people! You need to stop."

The man turned towards him, and his unseeing eyes seemed to settle on him, bloody tears running in thick rivulets down his face. "I won't become you!" he shouted, raising his gun.

In retrospect, there were probably better moves Sam could have made.


	3. Haunt

_**3 – Haunt**_

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jo reaching for him, prepared to pull him down, but Sam was sure she wasn't going to grab him in time.

It was weird how time slowed down when you were sure you were going to die. He could see everything, from a bead of sweat on the man's forehead to his finger starting to tense on the trigger, and none of it seemed to be moving at a regular rate.

But then Dean came charging out of a nearby aisle, running straight for the gunman.

This was a couple of different kinds of terrible. The gunman must have heard him, or seen him, because he started turning towards Dean almost immediately, and Sam could tell Dean wasn't going to make it. He was going to get shot before he could reach him. At the last second, Dean seemed to realize that too, and lunged, catching the gunman in a full body tackle. They both slammed hard to the floor, although the gunman kept hold of his weapon and aimed it Dean, who was able to grab his wrist and angle the gun away from him. The gunman fired a bullet harmlessly into the ceiling as Dean tried to wrestle him down. The whole time, the man was screaming about zombies.

"Dude, calm down," Dean said, trying to pin the man's hands to the floor. He got the gun away finally, and threw it aside. "I'm not a zombie."

Sam approached, wondering if Dean even knew how close to death he was. That was an astoundingly reckless thing to do, but Sam couldn't quite call Dean on it, since it had probably saved his life. But it reminded him what a shitty mindset Dean was still in since Dad's death.

Although Dean had a couple of inches and at least forty pounds on the dude – not to mention non bleeding, non-occluded eyes – the guy was twisting and bucking so wildly, Dean was barely able to keep a hold of him. Sam came over and held down his shoulders, looking into the man's disturbed face. The blood was still pouring down his face, and his eyes remained blindly white. His words were all mashing together, slipping into one another. " – zombiesalloverkilledeverybodyimnotazombieiwillnotbeeatenicantbeeatentheywontgetme –"

"Guy, hey, we're not zombies!" Dean shouted down into his face, to no avail. He waved his hand too, which just seemed mean. He didn't respond to either.

Jo stood over all of them, and asked, "What do we do?"

That was an excellent question. Sam didn't know, and caught Dean's eye, but he just shrugged. None of them knew what to do.

Sam was about to suggest tying up his hands – they had to have rope in a hardware store – and taking him out of here until they could figure out what to do, but he suddenly stilled beneath Dean, and said, in a gasping voice, "I hafta kill all the zombies." He then sighed, and stopped, his head lolling to the side.

"Hey, buddy," Dean said, patting his face. He then leaned down and tried to hear if he was breathing, while Sam searched for a pulse on his neck. He couldn't find one."He's dead."

"Of what?" Sam asked, looking to see if he had any obvious injuries. He seemed to have been bleeding only from his eyes, and even then, not enough to kill him.

There was a distant but growing sounds of sirens, and they knew they had to go. But what the hell had happened to him?

The three of them left out the back, feeling equally baffled and terrible. "What the hell was that?" Dean asked, as soon as they were back in the car.

Sam shook his head. "Clearly something made him that way."

"But what?" Jo asked. "I've never heard of a thing that makes you blinded with hallucinations and bleed from the eyeballs."

"Witchcraft?" Sam suggested, although that didn't feel right to him.

Dean shrugged as he started the car. "But how did Ash get that confused with a succubus?"

"He wouldn't," Jo said. "I mean, I know he acts like an idiot sometimes, but he's not."

"I don't suppose you saw anything that'd give us a clue?" Dean asked him.

Sam shook his head, and tried to remember everything he saw in his painful vision. Nothing unrelated to the shooting, as far as he could tell.

"Are there succubus relatives?" Dean asked. "Something close to but not exactly them?"

It was Sam's turn to shrug. "I'll have to –"

"Ash, pick up your goddamn phone," Jo said, and Sam turned to see she was indeed on her phone. "Look, it's not a succubus, it's something that blinds people with hallucinations and makes their eyes bleed. Is there a different kind of succubus? Let me know ASAP, or I'm adding to your tab." She hung up her phone and dropped it in her pocket. "Maybe with both of you looking, we can find something faster."

Sam nodded. "Smart."

Since they weren't sure what else to do, it was decided they'd still check out motels, and follow the succubus hiding places on the map, as that's presumably what Carlos was doing before he called Ellen. Maybe if they could retrace their steps, they'd find some clues.

Sam took a few aspirin with some beer, hoping the ache in his head would go away, and also hoping that he wouldn't have to have another vision before they found them. Because the more time it took to find them, the less likely they were to be alive. Not that he was going to say that with Jo in the car.

The next two motels they checked out were a bust, as was the first condemned warehouse. But at the closed down lumber mill, they found what may have been a break of a kind. Dean found a couple of spent shotgun shells in the detritus and dead birds on the ground. It was impossible to say how old they were, but there was still a hint of gunpowder in the air. Jo thought they were from one of her mother's shotguns, but that was impossible to know. Bullets were bullets. But they let her believe it because there was no harm in it.

Still, it wasn't a great clue. Someone shot at something here, but there was no sign anything was hit or hurt, and no sign anyone was taken either. No sign of anything really, which was kind of weird, especially since they found the shells. Unless the scene was staged. Breadcrumbs, just enough to pique their interest and keep them looking … but that was crazy. Why was he thinking that?

They decided to take a break and get some food at a nearby bar, and discuss strategy. Not that there was much to discuss, but it made them feel less helpless.

Speaking of which, the TV over the bar was tuned to the local news when they arrived, and they were covering the hardware store shooting. Three dead, five injured, which was probably not as bad as it could have been, or at least that's what Sam told himself. Then, the worst part. Someone had shaky camera phone footage of Dean tackling the gunman. His face wasn't visible – which was a blessing, because Sam was pretty sure he was still wanted by at least one police department – and the footage was pretty shitty, but as was spelled out under the video, the hunt was on for the "mystery hero". Dean saw it, and when Sam came back to the table, he was grinning ear to ear. "They said I'm a hero," he said, picking up his beer. He was clearly enjoying this. Even Jo rolled her eyes.

"You're a maniac is what you are," Sam said, keeping his voice low. "You almost got yourself killed."

Dean just shrugged, still grinning. Sam knew he was an idiot for even thinking he'd talk about this, especially in front of someone else. He couldn't get Dean to talk about anything even when it was just the two of them.

Why was his paranoia not going away? Sam felt like his skin wanted to crawl off, and he had a sense someone was staring at him, even though, when he looked, he caught no one looking their way.

"So where do we go now?" Jo asked, consulting the rudimentary succubus nesting sight map. "We can't do all these houses, can we?"

Dean shrugged. "Why not?"

Sam stared at him. "Because we'd be breaking into one house after another. Call me crazy, but I'm thinking we'd be joined by cops by house three."

"We're breaking into basements, not houses. If we're careful, we can do it."

Sam shook his head, and rubbed his eyes, which felt dry and sandy. Goddamn it, Dean was in full crazy bravado mode. This didn't bode well. "I'll be back," he said, standing up and heading for the bathroom.

What the hell were they supposed to do now?

* * *

Jo watched Sam walk off, both glad and a little anxious. For reasons she didn't fully understand, Dean seemed slightly different when it was just the two of them talking. It was like he dropped a lot of his macho bullshit act, but the why of it eluded her. Sam had to see through his bullshit machismo even better than she did, so why did he keep it intact when Sam was around? Weird.

She picked at the label on her beer bottle, and asked him, "What are the chances they're still alive?"

Dean shook his head. "You can't think that way. They're still alive."

"How do you know that?"

"Experienced hunters? They're better equipped to survive than anybody." He sounded like he almost believed this.

Which did answer one question. Dean embraced this positivity to sell it, to other people, to his brother, while not believing it himself for a single second. But like many hunters, he was an excellent liar. Jo recalled him trying to take care of Sam's injuries while he was bleeding all over the bar, and pieces fell into place. Dean was a Dad. He instantly stepped into the role like it was second nature. He played Dad for Sam earlier, and he was playing Dad for her now. Jo almost told him to knock it off, but then it occurred to her he might not know he was doing this. "What was your Dad like?" It probably sounded like a non-sequitur to him, but she felt like she had almost cracked Dean's code.

Sam was easy to figure out. He was affable, kind of cute, quieter, more bookish, a nice, solid guy, dependable and good to have in a crisis. With demon caused psychic visions, but that was hardly his fault. Dean was a puzzle made of many pieces that didn't seem to fit together. He was a cocky asshole who seemed to hate himself, a cynic who played positive for other people, an irresponsible man boy who could turn into someone's Dad at the drop of a hat. He was a whole bunch of things that didn't make sense. And also, maddeningly, crazy hot. She'd met handsome hunters before – although they were few and far between – but Dean made them look like dog shit. In another, civilian life, he could have been a male model. He was simultaneously aware of this, and unaware of this. He was a Schrödinger's Cat of a human being, and you never knew which one you were getting until you opened the box.

Dean raised an eyebrow at the question, but answered it. "He was a hero. He always knew what to do." With a self-aware chuckle, he added, "He'd probably know what to do here."

"Was he around a lot, growing up?"

"Of course, yeah. He raised us after Mom died."

"But he was on the road a lot hunting, right? So it was just you and Sam?"

"We traveled with him," Dean replied, which wasn't exactly an answer, but close enough. So, yeah, that's what she thought. He'd been playing Dad for Sam most of his life. "Why do you ask?"

She shrugged, and glanced down at her beer bottle. "No reason." She reached into her pocket to look at her phone, since Ash really should have called her back – he'd never been unconscious this long – and was shocked at what she discovered. "My phone's dead."

"You didn't charge it?"

"It had a full charge last time I looked. There's no way the battery could have run down that fast."

Dean grabbed his phone out of his pocket, and from the way he frowned, he really didn't have to say anything. "Mine's dead too."

"What does that mean?" Jo actually knew it meant nothing good, but she meant besides that.

Dean shook his head, pocketing his phone and looking around the bar. Was he looking for someone else on their phone? Oddly enough, there wasn't, which seemed like an impossibility nowadays.

It was then the lights flickered, briefly, and Jo thought she saw dark movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked towards it, but there was nothing there but shadows. But she saw them move, right? She was sure she did.

The lights came back up full, and the television hissed with static. The bartender turned it off. "Jeeze, not again."

Dean looked at him. "This happen a lot?"

"For the last few days, yeah," the bartender replied. He was a chubby guy with a chinbeard, and went back to pouring drinks as he talked. "The electric company says it's a short on the line, but I don't know why they haven't fixed it yet."

Dean frowned down at the table, considering this. After he was quiet for too long, she prompted him. "What does it mean?"

"No idea. But that's when all this weirdness started, right? A few days ago?"

She shrugged. "It's a bit vague, but yeah." What did that mean? Succubuses that weren't succubuses, also draining the town's energy supply? Seemed like random stuff thrown in a blender.

Dean thought about it a moment, but if he came to any conclusions, he kept them to himself. His eyes darted to the men's room door. "Shouldn't Sam be back by now?"

"I have no idea. He's your brother." She almost said pseudo-son, but kept the observation to herself. He'd probably hate it.

Dean got up and headed for the men's room, and she followed, partially out of curiosity, and partially because she still didn't trust those shadows.

Dean opened the door, and said, "Sam?" She let him go in alone, because the brief glimpse of what a dirty, depressing men's room it was was enough for her. But she heard Dean inside, still calling out "Sam," and opening stall doors with increased forcefulness. It's when he shouted, "Sammy," that her gut suddenly clenched. Dean came out, eyes wide and shoulders tensed. "He's not in there."

"Is there another way out?" But even as she asked, she knew it was a stupid question. Sam wouldn't just ditch them, especially now.

Dean slapped the door. "Only way in and out. Something -"

Whatever else he was going to say was interrupted by a big burly guy slamming open the door of the bar. He had a rifle in his hands, and his eyes were opaque white, with blood falling like tears from his empty eyes. "You brought the monsters here!" he screamed, and opened fire.


	4. Half Sick of Shadows

_4 – Half Sick of Shadows_

Dean tackled Jo and dragged her to the floor while gunshots and people yelling filled the bar with noise. And yet all he could think at that moment was Sam.

What motherfuckers had taken him, and why? Without a fight? That seemed like a thousand different kinds of wrong. And not just because Dean was going to find those bastards and make them eat their own fucking guts.

Dean rolled under the nearest table, and started reaching for his own gun when he paused. Should he try and take this guy alive? What difference would it make? The other guy died, even though they tried to take him.

Dean had made the decision to shoot to wound when another gunshot went off, and he saw that Jo had beaten him to the punch. She'd shot him in the lower leg, avoiding the femoral artery, and dropped him. He was still firing, though, although now it was indiscriminately. He was hitting walls and tables instead of people, which was an improvement, but he was still screaming about monsters.

Dean crawled beneath tables, and even though the guy was now on the floor, he didn't seem to see him. Well, technically, he probably couldn't see anything, just whatever was playing behind the whites of his eyes. Dean managed to crawl close enough to him to grab his gun and wrench it out of his hands, but in spite of his bleeding leg wound, he fought back hard, just like the zombie guy at the hardware store. Only thing was, this guy was about twice as heavy, and when he rolled over, he pinned Dean beneath him. "You brought the monsters here!" he shouted down into his face. Strangely enough, his breath smelled like stale mouthwash. "It's all your fault! You're killing us!"

"Hey pal, I just got here," he replied, trying to kick him off. Goddamn, he was heavy, and he was bleeding all over him. Or at least he hoped that spreading warmth was blood.

Jo slammed her gun butt into the side of the man's head, and helped him get the guy off of him. He was unconscious, not dead, or at least not yet. "You okay?" she asked, offering Dean a hand up. He almost didn't take it, but then figured what the hell. He was probably beyond getting his pride hurt now.

"Yeah." Once he was back on his feet, he looked down, and confirmed that it was blood on his jeans.

The bartender peeked out from behind the bar, and said, "Cops are on the way."

Dean nodded, glad for the head's up. He glanced at Jo, who understood and nodded right back. And they got the hell out of there.

It would have been nice to take the guy with them, on the off chance he survived more than a couple of minutes, but he was just too big, and there was no way they could take him without looking super suspicious. Besides, they had more important things to worry about, like finding Sam.

"What do we do now?" Jo asked, once they returned to the Impala. It was a question Dean had been asking himself all the way here.

"Did you see anything weird before Sam disappeared?"

"Yeah. When the lights went out, the shadows seemed to move. Did you see that?"

Dean nodded, relieved. He thought it was just an optical illusion. "Okay, now we have moving shadows to add to the list. What we need to do is find a land line and make a call."

"And who has land lines nowadays?"

Dean smirked. "You have not spent much time in crappy motels."

Dean drove back to the last motel they cleared, all the while trying not to obsess about Sam. He had to focus on the case, because solving this was the only way to save Sam, Ellen, and Carlos. Assuming they were savable at this point. And he refused to believe otherwise.

They rented a room, and once inside, Dean confirmed there was a landline, and hallelujah, it worked. He called Ash, who picked up on the second ring. "Sex god," Ash answered.

Dean shot an evil glare at the handset, aware that Ash couldn't see it. But he hoped he felt it. "Ash, it's me."

"Dean! Holy fuck, dude, do you all have your phones off? I've been tryin' to call y'all for hours!"

Dean knew this was an exaggeration, and just let it go. "All our phones are dead. The batteries mysteriously drained. Which is something to add to the weirdness pile, along with power drains on the entire city grid, and moving shadows. Do you have any answers for us?"

"Whoa, that … that might narrow down the choices," Ash said. It sounded like he put a glass down. "We got a lotta stuff that can cause white eyes and eye bleeding, but not a lot of it with those two things together. And there's no succubus relatives that I could find. Witchcraft is the first one, but unless you found signs of a coven on a rampage I'm gonna wipe that off the board."

"Nothing to support that," Dean concurred.

"'Kay. The first possibility is a real weird one. There used to be this cult, called the Acolytes of Phobetor, who worshiped the old Greek god of nightmares, Phobetor. Well, duh. Anyway, they used to make this mystical drug they'd use during rituals, with this stuff that supposedly makes absinthe look like Jolly Ranchers. It'd make the dosed person's eyes go white, and bleed. And then they died, because the drug marked them as a sacrifice for Phobetor."

Wow, that sounded exactly like what they were dealing with. With a few glaring problems. "This is a cult made of humans?"

"Yeah."

"So how could they affect the energy grid, or grab people out of sealed rooms?"

"Uh, hold up, Cochise. I didn't say they were doin' any of this shit, I'm just saying it's the most likely option. The cult itself is thought to be extinct, since 1887. I don't know why they'd suddenly reform in Bumfuck nowhere today."

Oh good, another question to add to the pile. "Could someone have this drug and be using it, not knowing what it really does?"

Ash made a sort of hmm noise as he thought it over. "The Phobetor drug ain't easy to make. It's not like bathtub meth. You need some serious mystical shit for this. No way is a civilian looking for a cheap high just gonna stumble into this stuff."

Jo crowded into him, eavesdropping on the conversation from the other side. He didn't know if she could hear Ash's part of the conversation or not. She smelled nice. Dean wished he didn't know that. "Okay, so … could someone have cooked this up deliberately?"

"To what end? Reform the cult?"

"Maybe. Or maybe as, I dunno, revenge or something?"

"What d'ya mean?"

Jo was giving Dean a look that said pretty much the same thing. "The drug kills whoever it's used on, right? It might be a great murder weapon. A regular coroner wouldn't know what they were looking at."

Ask clicked his tongue. "Maybe. But that's a reach. It'd hafta be someone who knows some mystical shit. If they're that into this stuff, they could find a less showy way to kill people off."

"But maybe that's it," Jo said. Dean twisted the mouthpiece towards her, so Ash could hear her better. "Maybe he wants to cause chaos, and kill a whole bunch of people, not just the ones he's dosing."

"But why?" Ash asked.

"Because he's a fucking psycho," Jo replied. "Don't make this more complicated than it needs to be."

"But where do the power drains and moving shadows come into it? And missing people?" Ash replied.

Dean angled the phone back towards him. "That's what we're hoping you could tell us."

Ash sighed heavily, for their benefit. "This is different shit. I don't think any of the possibilities said anything about electricity or shadows."

"Keep looking." Dean read off the number on the phone, and said, "Find out anything else, leave a message here."

"All right," Ash said, and sounded slightly put out. "But we're still not sure what we're dealin' with here."

"Yeah, but we're running out of time. Thanks, Ash." Dean hung up, trying to shove all his emotions aside and focus on the case. To find them, he had to shut it all off. Man, it would have been nice if it was easier.

"So what now?" Jo asked, stepping back and giving him some room. "We see if any drug dealers are peddling freaky stuff?"

Dean had brought in the succubus file, and sat on the bed as he flipped through it, coming to the victim dossier. "We can consider that plan B. I'm thinking we start with the first victim. Maybe that'll give us some clue on how to proceed." According to the file, it was Michael Kirkland, who lost his shit at work and killed three people before dropping dead. Since he was a pastor, this meant he killed people in a church over on Aspen Street.

Someone had a grudge against a pastor? He thought it was priests getting into trouble with all the scandals. Well, everybody was probably guilty of something, although he sincerely hoped that wasn't the cause.

He'd just dropped the file on the bed and was about to tell Jo when the light in the room flickered. He was instantly on his feet, gun in hand, although how good bullets would be against shadows he had no idea. Jo pulled out her pigsticker, and he couldn't fault her thinking. Iron was good against a lot of supernatural things. It was worth a shot. They instinctively stood back to back, and waited.

But the power resumed, steady and solid, and nothing had lunged at them. Maybe because they were ready for it this time. Funny, now he was ascribing intelligence to the things, whatever they were.

"Are you starting to get the feeling we're being hunted?" Jo asked.

Oh good, it wasn't just him being paranoid. Nice to know.

* * *

Sam came to tied to a chair, and wished this were new. He then tried to figure out who grabbed him and where he was.

There were ropes around his chest, pretty snug but not suffocating. The ties holding his hands behind him were plastic and tight. The chair was wooden, but it seemed nailed to the floor, which wasn't ideal. His escape plan was to knock the chair over. Even if he couldn't break the chair – a huge if – he could probably slip through the chest ropes. No such luck now.

The last thing he remembered was being in that crummy bar bathroom. He was at the sink when the power seemed to fritz out, and then … what? It went dark. He thought he still saw movement reflected in the mirror anyway, and when he turned toward it … that's where his memory stopped.

Sam figured he was knocked out, although his head didn't hurt much more than it had after the vision. Hell, maybe it was still the vision hangover. He couldn't be sure of anything at this point.

The room he was in was dingy, and save for the chair, contained no furniture. The wallpaper, some kind of flower pattern on washed out green, was peeling, and missing in patches. There was a strong smell of mold and dust. This was an abandoned place, and had been for a long while.

Haunted? He wondered. There was an almost eerie stillness to this place, and the silence gave way to quiet sounds in other room. Water dripping, perhaps from a gutter or a tap. Small creaks in floorboards, the merest scuttling of rodents in walls. No give in the ropes, minus zero in the cuffs. "What are you waiting for?" he shouted. Being kidnapped was bad enough, but were they really going to make him wait for the punchline? That was fucking cruel.

Still, they made him wait one more minute before he heard a man's chuckle from the hallway, and the room's main door opened slowly, creaking like a horror movie sound effect. "That impatience is a Winchester thing, isn't it? I'm thinking Dean's been a bad influence on you, Sammy."

"That's Sam," he corrected. Okay, so bad guy knew who he was. Great. That never boded well.

As far as he could tell, he was just a man. Average height, average build, short, dirty blond hair. He was wearing flannel and a canvas work jacket, and, obnoxiously enough, black sunglasses indoors. In this dimly lit room, he probably couldn't see a damn thing. He gave him a lopsided grin that was just this side of a sneer. "Fine, Sam. Although we're very nearly family. I think I should call you whatever I want. Especially since I'm doing you a favor."

"Oh really?" Was the family talk meant to unnerve him? It was a weird choice. "How's that?"

"'Cause things are gonna get nuts, and I couldn't risk you getting killed. You're way too important to me." The man stopped, well out of kicking distance, although that was a joke. Sam had no real leverage here. Even if he could kick him, he couldn't capitalize on it.

Sam shook his head, not sure what this head game was supposed to mean. "Who the fuck are you?"

"Oh, we go way back, you and me. You could say we're blood," the man said, finally taking off his jackass sunglasses, and revealing his yellow eyes.

Sam's heart felt like it leaped into his throat. The yellow eyed demon. The bastard that had ruined his life, and killed nearly everyone he cared about. He was struck with equal surges of fear and rage. "You son of a bitch!" he yelled, straining pointlessly against his ropes.

The yellow eyed demon laughed. "Calm down, you're safe. I could hardly let something happen to one of my boys, could I?"

"Fuck you! Where's Dean?"

The demon shrugged. "Out in the shitstorm, I imagine. Isn't that what he loves anyway? Blunt little instrument, built for war. Let him have it. You're meant for so much better. He's a mutt. You're pedigree all the way, baby."

Sam fumed, and tried to swallow it down, because this bastard just loved his suffering and his rage. "What are you doing to this town?"

The demon smiled. It was a nasty thing, gloating, all teeth and arrogance. "Call it a test."

"Of what?"

The demon crouched down, actually putting him below his eye level. But he had all the power, and he knew it. "Things to come."

That was as good as no answer at all. But it still made Sam's stomach sink. What was going on out there?

And what were Dean and Jo in for?


	5. No Exit

_**5 – No Exit**_

Jo didn't know what she was expecting. A flashing sign, a note from her Mom saying _'I'm here'_. Would have been nice.

But life didn't work like that, and nothing was ever that simple. They had a handful of nothing, and now they were being hunted by … something. Shadow monsters sounded childish, but that's essentially what they were, as far as they knew.

At least she wasn't alone in being frustrated. Dean seemed especially glum and tense as they drove out to the pastor's church, probably concerned about his brother more than anything else.

Jo realized, standing close to him in the motel, he smelled like leather and gunpowder, which shouldn't have worked, but somehow on Dean it seemed pleasant. Maybe because they were at the bar, but she thought he'd smell like beer. Or maybe it was because most hunters she'd ever met smelled like beer, tobacco, or both. Except Ash, who smelled like pot half the time, although he swore to her Mom he didn't smoke it at the Roadhouse. Which everyone knew was a lie. Patchouli hid nothing.

The pastor's church looked like one of those you'd see in a cloying motel painting. It was a tiny, peaked roof dwelling that could have been a small house, or converted from one. It even had a small white picket fence around the front. How quaint. Made her want to barf.

They were barely out of the Impala when it started bucketing down rain. The dark clouds filling the sky also dimmed the sun, so now it seemed like dusk. Great, more chances for the shadows to get them. How could the weather be conspiring against them?

They got drenched during the short walk from the car to the church, and Dean hardly touched the door before it opened. They exchanged a look, because they both knew that was another bad sign. Dean made a couple of very military style hand gestures, telling her he was going in to scope it out, and he wanted her to wait here and cover his back until they determined if it was clear or not. On the one hand, why did she have to hang back? On the other, better him taking the initial lunatic punches than her, so she nodded and let him have it.

The interior of the church was super dark, and smelled strongly of lemon and pine cleansers. Dean turned on his flashlight, scattering the shadows, although she hoped not literally. She honestly couldn't tell.

In one hand, she had her gun, and in the other she had a flashlight, which she turned on both to help light up the place, and also to see if anything actively moved away from the light. Again, she wasn't sure. She seemed to only see the movement out of the corner of her eye, never looking at it straight on.

After a few moments, Jo asked, "See anything?" The rain was pattering against the roof and windows so loudly, she had to raise her voice.

Dean shook his head. "It's an empty church. I think the cleaning product fumes are giving me a headache." He turned from the altar and headed back down the aisle, but he seemed to stumble on the carpet.

"Smooth."

He flashed her an annoyed look, and looked down, as if he could find something to blame. As it turned out, he did. "The carpet's got a lump in it." He crouched down, and pulled back the aisle carpet. She thought it was a lame way to save face, but there actually was something drawn on the floor beneath the rug. She ventured inside to have a closer look.

It looked like maybe it was drawn in ink, or a weird kind of chalk. They were symbols she almost recognized – a sort of open crescent moon shape, something that could have been an eye, something else that could have been a snake flattened by a steamroller – but not exactly. It was like they were approximations of shapes incompletely described. Jo would have been willing to believe it was graffiti, except who hid that under a rug in a church? "Could this be related to witchcraft?"

Dean shook his head. "They use hex bags, not whatever this is." He studied it a moment longer, playing his flashlight over them, the shadows coagulating at the fringes like they were waiting for the batteries to die so they could rush in. "This almost looks like summoning symbols of some kind."

"Summoning what?"

He shrugged. "Got me. Sam was better with this stuff than I was." He looked up into the darkness, brow furrowing. "Which makes it interesting that he disappeared first, doesn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe someone was trying to cover their tracks. Taking Sam off the board first was the smart move." He stared at nothing, considering this new information. Jo wanted to punch him because his resting, thinking face was absurdly pretty. She hadn't realized that men existed who were so beautiful you just wanted to beat them to a pulp for having the sheer gall of being real, but now she had. She hoped that, one day, Dean realized and appreciated how hard it was for her not to beat the shit out of him. "We may be in deeper shit than I thought."

Jo scoffed. "Is that possible?"

"Somehow, whatever it is that's in this town? They know us, me and Sam. They may have known your Mom, Carlos, you. We could be on seriously borrowed time here, unless they don't consider us much of a threat."

"Is that news? I kinda thought we knew we were fucked already."

"This is a new kind of fucked," Dean said, throwing the rug back into position and standing up. "If I'm right, we're lucky they haven't thrown everything at us they have."

"Who's they?"

"The million dollar question. I wish I could tell you."

Jo sighed, and led the way out the door, where the rain was still pelting down like it had a grudge against them. She had started towards the Impala when she stopped, and looked across the road. She'd initially taken the shapes as small trees or hedges, but then her brain reminder her it had been a vacant lot when Dean parked. He followed her, but she put her hand out, stopping him.

It was people. Maybe a dozen, mostly men, some women, with white eyes and bloody tears streaming down their face, standing side by side like Redcoats. Some had guns, some had knives, one even had a pair of bolt cutters. The most disturbing thing was they were just standing there, as if waiting for a ride. But no, they were just waiting for them.

"Uh, Dean, are you psychic too?" Jo asked. Because from the looks of this, an argument could be made that he was.

"Run," Dean said softly, pushing her behind him, and taking aim with his .45. Dad Mode had been activated. "I'll hold them off as long as I can. Which might just be a few seconds, so hurry up."

"No, you're not going all Wild Bunch on me." Jo grabbed his arm, and tugged him with her as she started walking backwards. "You either come with me or we die here."

He made a noise of frustration, and that's when she knew he got him. Dad Mode was also Guilt Mode, and once you pushed that button, there was no going back. "Okay, go, go," he said, turning and going with her.

Jo ran around the back of the church, Dean following, and also shooting behind himself blindly, as the crowd of drugged people roared a challenge and started running after them. The ones with guns shot at them, but from the sound, they mostly hit the church.

There was a loose clump of trees behind the building, too few to call the woods, but it would probably serve the same purpose for them now. Jo took a moment to wonder if her mother was even alive as she ran into the trees, and heard a bullet thunk into a trunk beside her.

Dean grabbed her by the arm and pulled her behind a big pine, that almost gave them some cover. "Let's split up," he said. "Smaller groups make them an easier target. I'll meet you back at the bar, okay?"

She wanted to protest, but his plan actually made sense. If they could thin the herd that way, it would also be easier to reduce the crowd in a more general, violent sense. She nodded. "Don't get killed."

"You too," he said, and then tore off towards the left, making as much noise as possible, also randomly firing a few shots, so they'd know who to follow. Jo ran off to the right, and fired a couple of random shots too. It was time to find out how smart these drug addled people were.

* * *

Sam thought his headache had finally disappeared, when it rallied with an especial viciousness. He could take his own pulse with the thudding inside his skull.

He'd tried to work out an escape plan as soon as the yellow eyed demon left the room, but he was starting to give in to despair. There was no way out, was there? He might as well be a roach in a glue trap. If he could pull off his own arms, he could escape the bonds, but where the fuck would that leave him?

Sam did wonder if the thudding was related to his psychic ability, and the proximity of the yellow eyed demon. It seemed to get stronger around him, didn't it? Could he use that to his advantage? Sam thought there might be something there, but he hadn't quite figured out what yet. He wasn't like Andy, he couldn't talk people into doing his bidding or think it at them, but his ability had to be good for something. He refused to believe it was completely passive, because it honestly hit him way too violently. Something that arrived with such a kick couldn't be completely harmless. The only problem was, he had to figure out what it could also do, and fast.

The door creaked open, and the yellow eyed demon came back in, smiling like the cat that ate the canary. "Comfy, Sam?"

"Don't you have something else you could be doing? Like pulling the wings off butterflies or something?"

He smirked and chuckled, and Sam once again wished he could kick him in the face. "What kind of host would I be if I totally neglected my honored guest?"

"If I'm so honored, untie me."

"And let you warn your brother? I think not. I'm polite, but I'm not stupid. Speaking of which, wanna guess what's happening to Dean now?"

"If you hurt him –"

"I know, I'm dead. Even though you don't know how to kill me." The yellow eyed demon smiled, showing all his teeth. "I enjoy a good empty threat session as much as the next demon, but I think you should find a new song to sing, Tweety Bird."

Sam glared at him, his head throbbing even worse. Were his powers trying to tell him something? If so, he didn't quite understand their language. "I will find a way, if it's the last thing I do."

"Uh huh. Do you want to ask me about your Dad yet?"

Sam felt his stomach burn. This asshole couldn't read minds, but he might as well have. "Shut up."

"C'mon, Sammy, you're dying to know. Did I kill your Daddy? Did I take the Colt? Yes and yes. He traded his life for Dean's. Isn't that hilarious? You stole Dean's Mommy from him, and now Dean steals your Daddy from you." He bent down to his eye level and cocked his head, still smiling obscenely, like this was the world's best joke. Maybe it was. "I also took the only thing that has a shot at killing me. You know what this means, right? I won. I won everything. And you poor chumps don't even realize it yet. The fact that you're still alive is only because I need you to be alive for the second act. Just you, Sammy. Fuck Dean. The only reason he's still alive is because I didn't need you being a mopey little bitch because you lost your Dad and your bro in one fell swoop."

Sam strained at his bonds, even though it was pointless. Everything was pointless. He needed to think of a way out, and he couldn't. He hadn't been this frustrated and helpless since that time those werewolves kidnapped him when he was twelve. But that hadn't lasted long. Dad went after the ringleader, and Dean killed his way through the rest of them holding him hostage. For a moment, Sam thought the exertion of it all made Dean's freckles stand out, but then he saw it was blood misted over his face like a horror movie. He loved his brother, and he remembered he'd never been so relieved to see anyone in his life, but holy fuck, did Dean scare him sometimes. There was a core of darkness in him that Sam always hoped nobody roiled. And it made him think about his own dark side, which, contrary to what he preferred to believe, was as dark as Dean's, maybe even more so. He just rarely let other people see it. "You may as well kill me now, asshole, 'cause I'm never gonna be what you want me to be."

The yellow eyed demon chuckled some more, and reached out and touched Sam's face, which made his skin crawl. He reflexively jerked his head away, and the demon laughed more. "You're half way there already, Sammy. You know that, don't you? You can feel my blood in you growing stronger, can't you?"

"Fuck off." There was a small part of Sam that wanted to give in to total despair right now, because he could. He could feel it throbbing against the confines of his skull, slicing through his gray matter like a laser.

Two huge guys – demon meat suits – had entered the room, but stood near the door, quietly waiting for their orders to leave. "So here's the fun part," the yellow eyed demon said. "We know your brother and that sweet little girl are on the run, and they won't survive long, unless I bring them in. So pick one."

Sam glared at him. "Pick one for what?"

"To die. One dies, we bring the other in. Your choice."

"I'm not playing your sick game."

"Oh, but you have to. Or they're both dead." He leered at him. "Pick one. Sam, I'm going to count to three. If you haven't picked by then, I'm gonna kill them both."

"I pick me," Sam insisted.

The yellow eyed demon shook his head, his smile never faltering. "If I wanted you dead, Sam, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Three … two …"

Sam could feel tears of frustration and rage gathering in his eyes. Goddamn it. He was going to kill this monster. He had no idea how right now, but he was going to find a way out of this, and he was going to kill him. He'd die bloody and screaming.

"Dean," Sam finally said, squeezing his eyes shut. He knew, if Dean was here, this was what he'd tell him to do. He wouldn't allow Jo to die for him. But it still felt like Sam had just slit his own throat, and reached down and pulled out his own guts through the hole.

"What was that?" the yellow eyed demon said. He could hear the gloating in his voice.

"Dean. I'm gonna kill you, you son of a bitch!" he roared, opening his eyes and trying to lunge out of the chair. But the ropes held, and he did nothing. Sam's head still throbbed like an infected wound.

The yellow eyed demon laughed, and gestured to the two big demons behind him, who left the room. Presumably to kill Dean. "Was that so hard, Sammy? And you know what makes it extra special? Your Daddy died to save Dean. So now his death was absolutely worthless. Isn't that great?"

Sam seethed, blinking away tears, and trying very hard to remember to breathe. He was going to figure out a way to kill the yellow eyed bastard, if it was the last thing he ever did.

* * *

 _Now_

Dean felt the first bullet nick him as he ran through the trees, hoping he was making enough noise to draw more of the freaked out maniacs towards him instead of Jo. That's why he was stumbling through the underbrush like a drunken buffalo. He could be quieter, but he needed Jo to get out of this. Maybe she could find Sam, her mother, and get out of here before the shit really hit the fan. Assuming it hadn't already.

He still had no idea what was happening, but what little he had put together was terrible. Was it just his paranoia kicking in too late to save them, or was this all a trap? Since these things, whatever they were, knew who Sam was, was capturing Ellen just part of a ploy to get them here? To what end? That's what got him. He couldn't figure out why anything would want them here. If this was a trap, this seemed needlessly complicated. Who could want them, and why?

Dean zig zagged through the trees and the mud, ducking behind trees as best he could, but despite the muck slowing him down, he was rapidly running out of real estate. He could see up ahead a large chain link fence around the back of an even larger patch of ground. A school? Maybe. At least it was a Sunday, so it wouldn't be populated, so he didn't have to worry about collateral damage. But what was he going to do? Dean didn't have a plan, and he was having a hard time thinking of one beyond trying to last until they died of the drug sickness, or whatever exactly killed them. How long was that, though? He hadn't timed it. Dean hoped he could run that long. He needed to catch his breath somewhere, if only to reload.

The point became moot the moment the bullet tore through Dean's chest.


	6. Veteran of the Psychic Wars

_**6 – Veteran of the Psychic Wars**_

Dean knew he had lived life wrong since he knew that sometimes being shot hurt like fuck, and other times, shock set in almost immediately, so it was easier to ignore. This time, he got the former.

It was like he'd taken a sledgehammer to the chest, and a circus strongman had put all his weight behind it. He wasn't sure how his rib cage didn't collapse.

He fell forward, and tried to get his arms out to break his fall, but his left arm was strangely slow to respond, and Dean ended up hitting the ground face first. Mud was kind of soft, but not nearly as soft as he'd hoped. He could taste some of it seeping into his mouth.

The pain from the gunshot wound was radiant, and seemed to fill his whole chest with fire. It was also significantly harder to breathe. He heard the footsteps of the drug crazed people approaching, and he wanted to raise his gun and take a few potshots, but moving seemed to be beyond him right now. His torso was on fire, but the rest of him felt cold and dead.

He was dying, wasn't he? This was dying. On the one hand, Dean was fucking outraged. On the other, he was relieved. He should have died in the hospital; he shouldn't have been here anyway. His Dad was the one who should have been alive. He and Sam probably could have solved this in no time. What good was he? This proved he was pretty fucking useless.

His vision was weird. The ground looked fuzzy, like a thick, gray fog was coming in, and the footsteps were closer. What were they going to do to him? Eat him? Tear him to pieces? Use him as target practice? Dean didn't know, but he also didn't want to know, and he just let go. He slid into the cool darkness like it was a blanket waiting to catch him. The last thing he felt was someone grabbing his leg.

Then all was peace and darkness, and Dean hated himself for even thinking it, but he didn't have to fight anymore. It was over. He could rest now.

But then faintly, very faintly, he heard Sam shout, "Dean!"

Shit! Sam. Sam needed his help. He couldn't leave him on his own with this shit. He promised Dad he'd look after him – or kill him, but there's no fucking way Dad meant that, right? – and he had to. There was no doubt about it.

So Dean fought, even though he didn't know what it meant in these circumstances. It was simple reflex to try and pull himself out of the dark.

Somehow it worked, and he didn't know how. The first thing he felt was pain, fiery and terrible, in his chest. He tasted blood and dirt in his mouth. Dean opened his eyes, and shuddered, as the room seemed cold, or maybe it was just him since he was soaking wet and losing blood.

Surprisingly, he was tied to a chair in an empty, shitty room. The floral wallpaper was peeling, and he saw a small mouse hole across the room, near the floor. The chair was wooden, and yet still nailed down to the floor, and he had ropes around his torso that were now sodden with rain and blood. Blood made semi-decent lube, and he should be able to squirm out of the ropes, if it wasn't for the handcuffs holding his wrists behind the chair. If he had a pick of some kind he could get out of them easily, but there wasn't, and he had no movement to aid in his search.

But wasn't his bullet wound on the left side of his chest? He would have sworn that was the case, but looking down at his blood and rain soaked t-shirt, it looked like the exit wound hole was on the right side. Weird. You'd think, once you got shot, you wouldn't fuck that up.

It suddenly occurred to him he had heard Sam's voice. He had regained consciousness because he heard him. "Sam!" he shouted, aware he was not in the room with him, but he must have been close.

If this was some hallucination that pulled him back from the brink of death, he was going to be so fucking mad.

* * *

Sam closed his eyes and concentrated, going into the pain. He'd tried to ignore it, but it kept getting worse. So rather than fight it, why not go into it? He didn't see that he had much choice.

He'd read up on meditation. He'd been hoping it would help with the visions and the pain, and some of the anger he'd been dealing with since Dad died. He hadn't told Dean about it, and his few attempts at it had ended in miserable failure. Trying to empty your mind seemed fucking impossible.

Except now, when he was trapped alone in an empty room, with no means of escape. Now it seemed surprisingly easy.

Sam concentrated on nothing but the pulsing pain, and let it fill his head, pushing out his thoughts, until he was nothing but pain. He was a walking wound, a thing that had no borders but the confines of his skull. He was nothing.

It was kind of nice. Sinking in to the pain until it closed over his head, until he was drowning in it, there was a strange sort of peace. You were helpless to it, but that was okay. If you were not meant to be here, why were you breathing it in, why was it filling your lungs and emptying you out? If you were not made for suffering, why did you suffer so? Sam almost felt like he was on the verge of something profound.

And suddenly, there was light. Dim, in a miasma of fog, but he could see it. He felt himself moving towards it without actually moving at all, and while the pain was still there, still a part of him, beneath him like a burner slowly turning on, he could live with it. He felt almost removed from it. It wasn't totally peace, but it wasn't bad.

"Sam!"

The voice cut through the fog, and he opened his eyes to his lousy room. He'd imagined that, right?

"Sam!"

No, that definitely wasn't inside his head. "Dean?" he replied, unable to believe it. Yellow eyes was going to kill him. Or was that just more of his lies? Or had he done the opposite, and killed Jo and spared Dean? Goddamn it!

"Thank God! Are you okay?"

"I think so. You?"

"Uh, yeah," Dean lied. It was almost kind of sweet how Dean had never figured out that Sam always knew when he was lying. Dean was actually quite excellent at lying, but Sam just knew him too well. You grow up with a guy, you grow up as they did, and you knew him. "Little tied up at the moment."

"Me too. How's Jo?"

Dean was quiet for a long minute. He'd set off a little guilt avalanche in him. "On the run, last time I saw her. Hope she still is."

"Me too." If Sam was judging the direction of sound correctly, Dean was in the next room. Why would yellow eyes do that? Except, of course, to torment the pair of them.

Dean then proceeded to tell him about the mystical drug that Ash presumed every one of the victims was on, which seemed reasonable. The problem was, who was dosing them, and to what end? Dean also told him about the summoning symbols they found in the church, and his own personal theory that whatever was in charge of this madness knew who they were.

Sam sighed heavily, because of course Dean was right, and he wasn't going to take this well. "I know who it is," Sam told him.

"Who?"

"The yellow eyed demon."

There was silence. It stretched for what seemed to be an eternity, and made Sam nervous. He expected Dean to be enraged, to shout a couple of choice profanities, but his silence was so much worse. When Dean got really mad, like dangerously, _here comes the dark side_ mad, he was quiet. He was so quiet, you'd never hear him coming until your head was on the floor.

Finally Sam heard a pained grunt through the wall. "Dean?"

"Gimme a sec," he replied, his voice low and tense. What the hell was he doing?

More silence, and Sam lost track of time. Suddenly his door opened, and Dean came in. He looked like a downed cat, dripping water from his hair and his clothes, mud caked on half his face, but his eyes were embers of pure rage. "How the hell did you get free?" Sam asked, keeping his voice low. Hopefully, yellow eyes didn't know.

"Broke my thumb, squeezed my hand out of the cuffs," he said, untying the ropes keeping Sam in place. Holy shit, that's how mad he was. He went straight to self-mutilation to get out. No doubt about it; scary Dean had come out to play.

This close, Sam could smell blood, and he saw some of the water dripping from Dean was tinged a dark red. When he moved in front of him, Sam saw the small, ragged hole in Dean's shirt. "Holy shit, were you shot?"

He grunted an affirmative. "It looks worse than it is."

He was shot in the fucking chest! How could that possibly look worse than it was? How was he on his feet now? There were times Sam honestly thought Dean was fucking crazy, and this was one of those times. It was great, but it was equally troubling. How could someone hit that special level of stubbornness that basically made you superhuman? Sam wanted that.

With the ropes off his torso, Sam was able to stand, but he still had his hands zip tied behind his back. "If I had a knife I'd cut 'em off," Dean told him. "You're gonna hafta get 'em off yourself."

"How?"

"Pull them apart as hard as you can, and then slam 'em down on your hip, or, if you can't reach, your spine. Keep pulling them apart the whole time."

Sam frowned at him, wondering where this puzzling advice was coming from. Zip ties were impossible to get out of, right? Still, he did as Dean said, and on the third hit, which hurt, the ties snapped like a rubber band. "Where the hell did you learn to do that?" Sam asked, rubbing his wrists. The ties had left marks.

Dean stared at him. "You remember who you're talking to, right?"

Sam had to admit he had him there. If they ever gave up hunting, Dean probably had a built in future as an escape artist in Vegas.

Dean kicked the leg out of the chair Sam had just been sitting in, and after a moment, managed to wrench the loose leg out of the floor. He handed it to Sam without comment, and went to work loosening the second leg. Weapons. Not that they'd do much good against yellow eyes, but Sam knew how naked Dean felt without something.

"How does this help us against the yellow eyed demon?" Sam asked. He just had to.

Dean looked at the chair leg in his hand, and shuddered. It seemed like an involuntary reflex, probably due to the fact that he was soaking wet. Why was he soaking wet exactly? "If he shows up, I'll bash in his fucking skull."

"That hurts the vessel, not him."

"Yeah, well, we can't actually hurt him, can we? If I damage his vessel to the point he smokes out, that buys me time to get you away from him and here."

Sam grabbed his arm. "Dean, you can't –"

He turned to face him, his eyes almost glowing with a steely resolve that meant scary Dean was paramount right now. "He doesn't get you. I promised Dad I'd take care of you, and I meant it. If I can't kill that son of a bitch right now, I'll kill all his vessels and keep him on the move. He's taken enough from this family."

Sam couldn't argue with that, although he was a little flabbergasted by Dean stating baldly he'd kill any innocent vessels that yellow eyes commandeered. Why did anyone ever piss off Dean? There was no way to win. "He claimed he brought me here to protect me."

"From what?"

"From whatever's going on out there. I'll assume the white eyed, drugged up psycho killers."

"So he's controlling them?"

Sam shrugged. "No idea."

Dean didn't comment, just turned towards the door, wooden leg held high in his right hand. Sam then noticed his left hand, held down at his side, was starting to swell a bit. His thumb was crooked and slightly bloated. He broke it all right, but it looked like he broke it clean. Had to hurt, just like the leaking hole in his chest, but dark Dean seemed to ignore pain, or at least dismiss it with lock jawed machismo. Sam was pretty sure he could live a thousand years, and never truly understand his brother. But he did get that Dean only broke his own thumb to escape the cuffs for Sam. He might not have done it if it was only himself in danger. "Why are you soaking wet?"

Dean glanced back at him, his eyes betraying impatience. "It's pouring outside."

Sam wondered why they couldn't hear it in here. Shouldn't there have been some noise against the roof, or sounds of it sluicing down a gutter? And were all the windows of this place boarded over?

Dean opened the door, ready to attack, but the hallway was empty. It was an almost absurdly long corridor, dingy and yellowed like the interior of the rooms, and there were doors all along both sides of the hall. Sam started counting them, but stopped, because it seemed like an optical illusion. Had to be, didn't it? Were they in a decrepit old mansion or something? It seemed like there were thirty doors, and the hall was just too long, and the staircase leading down was absurdly long and narrow.

"Does this look right to you?" Sam asked.

Dean shuddered involuntarily and shook his head, making water droplets scatter. "I swear there weren't that many doors when I first left my room. Maybe I didn't notice 'em."

Sam realized his throbbing head had faded to a background pulse, and even that seemed wrong. The only noise was the water dripping from Dean onto the dusty floor, and once again noticing the diluted blood in the puddle forming at his feet, Sam couldn't take it anymore. He grabbed Dean's shirt and pulled it up, so he could see how bad the wound was.

"Hey," Dean protested, pulling free of Sam's grasp. But not before Sam saw the ragged hole in Dean's torso, leaking blood like rusty water from a broken swore he could see a white flash of bone.

Sam's first impulse was to rip off his own jacket, wad it up and try and absorb the blood, but it was absurd. Just like the hall, just like the fact that they couldn't hear the rain. "Dean, how are you not dead? That's a fatal wound. That's … how are you walking around?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "It's not that bad. I'm fine."

"It is not fine. Something's very wrong here." Sam ran a hand through his hair, and tried to make sense of this.

Dean scoffed. "Tell me something I don't know."

Sam found himself wondering if yellow eyes did kill Dean, but brought him back here all the same. Was this the way he was going to torment him with his death? Was he a meat suit, a revenant, maybe even a zombie?

Was the yellow eyed demon going to make him kill Dean? It was all Sam could do to swallow back a shudder, and try to figure out what he was going to do.

Suddenly being tied up helpless in that room didn't seem so bad.


	7. Insignificance

_**7 – Insignificance**_

Jo was pretty sure she was dead about a dozen different times. Once, she missed a bullet in the back only when the mud made her slip. She heard other gunshots, farther off, and hoped Dean was okay. But why worry about him, right? He was a Winchester, and they always seemed fine.

Somehow she escaped them, or maybe they just let her go, but either way, she got clear. Still, she didn't stop to take a breath until she was on the main thoroughfare, and even then, she hid behind a building to do it. She also took that moment to reload.

It was while she was doing this that she noticed a bit of graffiti on the neighboring building. It looked like one of those summoning symbols Dean found in the church, the one that kind of looked like an eye. Huh.

She walked over to have a look, and touched it, smearing the chalk a bit. Except, was it chalk? It seemed drier and more crumbly. She sniffed it, and after a couple of seconds, decided there was ash mixed in to it. She couldn't tell if it was just burnt wood or human ash or some mix of the two, but she didn't really care. She wiped it off on her pant leg, and guessed that must have given it some extra magical mojo. Jo used her sleeve to erase the symbol from the wall, and did it every time she saw one, and it turned out she saw three more by the time she reached the bar.

The cops had cleared out, but she got there in time to see the chubby bartender locking up. Jo looked around, but Dean wasn't obviously anywhere. She made sure she was out in the open, so if Dean was hiding he could see her. But why would he be hiding, except for sheer paranoia?

He didn't make it out of the woods, did he? At first she didn't want to believe it, but the more the seconds ticked past, the more likely that seemed. Was that why she got away? Dean pulled most of the zombie crew after him, and they got him. Shit. How could she be the only one left?

Out of options, she walked up to the bartender. "Oh, hey," he said, with that sort of hopeful look on his face that guys sometimes got when they thought they had a shot at her. "We're closed for today." She knew it was cynical and wrong of her to think all men were pigs, but … that's when Jo noticed his eyes were fixed on her boobs. And, oh yeah, she was wet from being rained on.

God. Compared to most guys, the Winchesters were actually thoughtful. Who would have guessed that? She zipped up her jacket aggressively, and gave him an evil look he probably didn't notice much at all. She wondered if showing him she was armed would make a difference. "I guessed as much. I was wondering if you'd seen the guy I was in here with earlier around?"

He thought about it, looking around on the off chance they were hiding behind a parked car. "Which one? The huge giant-y dude or the pretty boy?"

"The pretty boy," she replied, before she realized what she'd just said. "Although if you'd seen either, I'd like to know."

The bartender shook his head, but Jo noticed a quick glance towards her breasts, which were now covered, and that must have given him a case of the sads. Good. "Not since you guys left. Although … I don't think I saw the giant dude leave …"

"You were saying before that the electricity grid's been screwed up these last few days," Jo said quickly, before he could realize that Sam never actually left the bar, at least not by any door. "Has anything else?"

"What d'ya mean?"

"Well, have there been any new, strange people in town?"

"You mean besides all the crazies killing people?" He grimaced and glanced away as he considered it, pausing a moment to open an umbrella. "Not really. Except that Goth guy the bar back thinks is cute, but I think he looks like a cosplay reject, y'know?"

For the first time since she realized she'd made it out and Dean hadn't, Jo felt a bit of hope. "No, I don't know. Who is this guy?"

The bartender shrugged. "Just some guy, I don't know his name, but he moved into the old McDowell house last week."

"Can you tell me where that is?" And if he was the asshole behind all of this, and Jo figured out how to kill him, maybe she could eek the smallest of victories out of this disaster.

But if her Mom, Sam, and Dean were dead, she didn't know what she was going to do.

* * *

Sam was still trying to figure out what Dean might be when he got the weirdest sense they weren't alone.

He turned, sure he was about to come face to face with another monster, but to his surprise, the hallway was empty. "What is it?" Dean asked.

Sam shook his head, but then he realized something. "Someone else is here." It wasn't a monster he was picking up, but another person. How did he know that?

"No shit," Dean scoffed.

"No, not yellow eyes, someone else." Sam followed his strange gut instinct to the fourth door down the corridor. The door wasn't locked, so he opened it up, and found there was a single chair in the center of an empty room, with a woman tied to it. She was slumped forward, her long, dark hair hiding her face, but there was little doubt who it could be. "Ellen," Sam gasped, rushing to her. Dean quickly followed.

While Sam untied her, Dean knelt down in front of her, and took her face in his hand. "Ellen? Can you hear me?" After a second, he reported, "She has a pulse."

He nodded, not adding that she damn well better, although he thought it. Once he got Ellen's ropes undone, Dean caught her as she slumped forward, and Sam started looking around for something he could pick her handcuffs with. He found a loose nail in the floorboard, and decided to do what he could with that.

"Ellen, come on," Dean said, still trying to get through to her. He patted her cheek, because there was no way he was slapping her. Dean knew better than to do that, even if she was unconscious. "Ellen? Don't check out on us now." After a moment, he said, "Your daughter's hot. I mean, really hot. Think I'm gonna take her to Vegas, maybe swing down to Cancun for Spring Break."

Sam had to pause and glare at Dean. "What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to get her Momness to kick in. It should wake her up."

Sam shook his head. If he was a demon possessed meat suit, he knew Dean super well. That was just the kind of bizarre quasi-logic that Dean would pull out of his ass. While he continued to work on the cuffs, Dean kept on going. "She'd do great in a wet t-shirt contest. I bet we'd clean up. Maybe I can take her on the road, give her a new name, maybe get her stripping. What do you think about Starla?"

Sam managed to get the cuffs off Ellen, and much to his surprise, Ellen started muttering, and tried to sit up. "Wh-what? What are you saying?"

"Told ya," Dean said, holding her by the shoulders. "Ellen, you okay? You with us?"

Ellen lifted her head, and asked weakly, "Was somebody saying something about my daughter?"

Son of a bitch. How in the hell did that work? Dean flashed him a small smile. It really did seem like him and not an impostor, but that just made things creepier. Was Dean just dead, or was he still in there somehow, in spite of the fatal gunshot wound? How did any of this make sense?

"Nope," Dean replied, helping her stand up. "Are you okay?"

Ellen stood, and grabbed on to Dean's arm to steady herself before looking around the room in surprise. "Where the hell are we?" She then glanced at Dean, letting him go. "And why are you wet?"

Dean shrugged. "Out in the rain."

"Do you remember how you got here?" Sam asked her.

Ellen looked at him like he was crazy, and then confusion took over as she thought about it. "No. I was … what was I doing?" She took a deep breath, and that seemed to clear her head and wake her up a little. "I went to help Carlos. He was in trouble at his motel. There was this man with bleeding white eyes. I shot him."

"Then what happened?" Dean prompted.

She shook her head. "I don't remember. That's it. How about you two?"

"I was at a sink in a bar, and then I was just here," Sam admitted.

Dean sighed, and ran a hand through his wet hair. "I was shot in the woods."

"Shot?" Ellen looked at him, and saw the hole in his shirt. "Oh my God. Were you shot in the chest?"

She tried to grab his shirt and Dean stepped back before she could. "It looks worse than it is."

"Like hell. All shots in the upper chest are serious," Ellen countered, sounding both like a battlefield medic and a Mom. "You shouldn't even be standing. We need to get you to a hospital like five minutes ago."

"That would be great," Sam said. "But we're not sure where we are, or how to leave."

"And Sam thinks I'm dead already," Dean added, surprising him. "And he may be right. I actually think I remember dying, but here I am." Dean shrugged, as if it was no big deal.

Ellen's look was caught somewhere between horrified and baffled. "What? How is that … how can that be possible?"

Dean shrugged with his hands, gesturing to the empty room. "It isn't, not as far as I know, but here we are. I don't think I'm a monster, but who knows. Take my head off if start acting like something other than me. Fire as a last resort, okay?"

Sam stared at Dean, suspicious as well as caught off guard. "I didn't tell you any of that."

Dean gave him a smirky half-smile and haunted look that signaled this was very much his brother. It was hard to imagine even a dedicated duplicate getting that kind of contradictory detail right. "Kid, the day I can't read you like a book is the day I turn in my gun and fake badge."

Shit. Sam could see some sadness in his eyes too, like he knew this was it, but he was resigned to it, because Dean was nothing if not a fatalist. He liked to think he was being a realist, but Dean's world view got dark fast. Still, he would be a good soldier to the end, because that's what Dad taught him.

Ellen looked between them, and caught the vibe, but wasn't sure what to do about it. So she did the right thing, and stuck to facts. "You say you don't know where we are, but clearly we're in a house of some kind."

Sam shook his head, kind of glad for something else to think about. "It's not right. The proportions are all off. I think the yellow eyed demon is doing something to us, but I'm not sure what."

"The yellow eyed demon is behind this?" Ellen replied. "How the hell did you not lead with that?"

That was a fair point. But before Sam could respond, they heard a noise out in the hallway. It was like a scuff against the floor.

They all turned towards it, and Dean suddenly gave Ellen his chair leg and moved closer to the door, putting himself between the entrance and them.

"What the hell are you doing?" Sam said, pitching his voice to an angry whisper.

Dean looked back at him with a shrug. "I'm already dead. What else can he do to me? As soon as I get him, you two make a break for it."

"Dean –"

"Shut up, Sam," he replied, turning away and squaring his shoulders towards the door. "I'm not going to have died for nothing."

Sam didn't know what to say to that, so he didn't say anything.


	8. Mesmerize

_**8 – Mesmerize**_

Jo saw a rare item on her way to the McDowell house: a public pay phone. And it was working. So she took the opportunity to call Ash, see if he had something for her. She could still use all the help she could possibly get.

"I may have somethin' for ya," Ash said. "But it's kind of a stretch."

"The way things are now? I'll take anything."

"Okay. I think you might be dealing with a god."

She hadn't expected that. "Which one?"

"The one with the drugs, Phobitor."

"The nightmare god? How do you figure?"

"Well, it didn't make a huge amount of sense that a dead, obscure cult would just spring up again, right? So I tried to figure out what would, and the electricity made me wonder if that was being used as a stand in."

"A stand in for what?"

"Neural energy. See, Phobitor is one of those vampire gods, in that he feeds off his followers. But he used to have thousands of 'em, and how's he gonna make a meal out of a handful of sacrifices? So I got to thinking, maybe he's sucking on the energy grid as a last resort. Might be able to suck it out of the batteries on phones and laptops too."

She could kind of see that. Also, it was creepy as hell, but vampire gods usually were. "So the god is drugging people himself?"

"Maybe. Or he has a helper goin' around doing it for him."

"What about the shadows?"

"Nightmare god. He lives in the darkness. He can manifest that way too."

Great. She hadn't counted on fighting a god. Could she even do it? "Can he be killed?"

Ash chuckled. "Well, that's the sixty four dollar question, isn't it? I haven't found anything that says he can be put down or killed."

"Fantastic."

"Doesn't mean he can't be, just that there isn't a lot on the subject. But I've been thinking, since he's a creature of darkness, light must really piss him off."

Jo sighed, resting her forehead against the pay phone. Her lack of sleep was starting to wear on her, but there was no way in hell she was falling asleep in this town. "Would it kill him?"

"How bright can you get it? I'm thinkin' if you're pumping enough lumens, you should at least banish him."

"You're asking me to bet my life on a guess?"

"Sorry, kitten. He's an obscure god. Sometimes you gotta throw a dart and hope it sticks." In Ash's favor, he did sound sorry, but on the other hand, he called her kitten. He pretty much used up all his goodwill right there.

"Any other weaknesses I can exploit?"

"Not that I know of. Light's the only thing on the table."

"If someone's dosed with this drug, can they be cured? I mean, before they flip out and die?"

Ash's long silence seemed to tell her all she needed to know. "Sorry. There's no data on that. As far as I can tell, once you get hit with the stuff, you're doomed."

Great. Hopefully no more bastards would get dosed with the stuff, until she could kill him. If she could kill him.

Jo changed her plans. She had to retrieve the Impala at least, because it was bound to have useful stuff in the trunk. And then she had to swing by that equipment rental place she saw when they first got into town. Maybe it would have exactly what she needed.

* * *

As soon as the door started to swing open, Dean was on the move, so by the time they could even see that it was the yellow eyed demon, Dean had already tackled him and driven him out into the hall. Dean kept going, and before the yellow eyed demon could react, they crashed into and through the railing in the hallway. Sam didn't even have time to shout before they'd plummeted down to the ground floor.

"Dean!" Ellen shouted, running up towards the edge, but not quite to it. Sam was too horror struck to say anything for a moment.

Sam finally joined Ellen near the broken railing, and dared to look down, sure he'd see something terrible, like Dean splattered all over the floor like a fallen pizza. Ellen put a hand on his arm, and asked, "What's going on?"

It was just black. There was no ground floor. There was nothing down there but a formless void. Even the staircase seemed to disappear into darkness. Sam stared down into this, not comprehending it at all. Did that mean Dean was still alive, or at least not as dead?

He looked beyond that, and realized how fucked up this all was. "I don't know." And he really didn't. This didn't make anymore sense than alive/dead Dean.

"What are you?" The yellow eyed demon said. Sam jumped, because he was standing behind him now. Both he and Ellen turned to face him.

"What?"

"What are you?" the demon repeated. "You shouldn't be doing this."

Sam shook his head. "I'm not doing anything. What are … where's Dean?"

Ellen leaned in and whispered, "I don't think this is the yellow eyed demon."

Sam glanced at the man, but he still had yellow eyes, and looked exactly the same as before. He glanced at her. "What do you mean?"

Yellow eyes made a disgusted noise. "How is it possible that you can be so stupid? Are you telling me you're some kind of idiot savant?"

Sam knew he was being insulted, but the why of it eluded him. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Two theories," Dean said, coming out of the room where they'd found Ellen. What the hell ..? "We're drugged, and sharing a hallucination, or you're doing this to us somehow." Dean pointedly stared at the yellow eyed demon.

Dean didn't think it was yellow eyes either? Sam parsed what he said, and the fact that he just popped up out of nowhere, and realized he was right. This also fit in with the house with unreal proportions, and the fact that the ground floor didn't exist. And Dean being alive and dead, and gone and now here.

Sam's head hurt, and he rubbed his temple as it pulsed. He thought he felt blood leaking from his nose, but when he touched it, there was nothing there. He was sure he had a nosebleed. He could feel the wet warmth of it, even though it wasn't there.

"You can't do this," the yellow eyed demon said, and he was still talking to Sam. "How are you even doing this?"

"I'm not doing anything." He wasn't, was he?

The demon pointed at Dean. "He's supposed to be dead." The demon then pointed at Ellen. "She was supposed to be gone, but you brought her back. No one can be brought back. So what the fuck are you?"

"We can ask you the same thing, pal," Dean replied, coming out to stand beside him. "Who the fuck're you?"

Although the yellow eyed guy gave Dean an evil look, he didn't answer him. "What freak spawn are you? Did –"

"Hey!" Dean stepped in front of Sam, playing protective older brother. Currently it was totally misplaced, Sam could more than take care of himself, but part of him still appreciated it. "Shut the fuck up, unless you want me to shove you into the abyss again. Now what the fuck are you?" Dean started stalking towards him, hands curled into fists at his side. Just from his posture alone, Sam knew Dean was about to start throwing the guy around until he gave him answers. Sam found himself instantly falling into step behind him, automatically backing him up.

The demon's (?) eyes narrowed, and if looks could've killed, Dean would have been a stain on the floor. "You dare, insect? Be gone with you." He waved his hand, and Dean disappeared. So did Ellen, leaving Sam all alone in the hallway with this … thing.

"What did you do to them?"

"You first. What the fuck are you doing?"

Sam remained baffled by this question, but started thinking about it. When did he first hear Dean? When he was meditating, trying to figure out how his psychic powers worked. Then he followed his gut to the room Ellen was in, as he somehow knew without knowing that she was there.

Holy shit – did he actually manage to do something with his weirdo psychic powers? How? And also, how did he do it without knowing what he was doing? Of course, it wouldn't be the first time.

Sam felt the throb in his head, and realized it was coming in fits and spurts, almost as if someone was taking random psychic jabs at him … and understood that was exactly what was happening. Not only had he been psychically doing things, he'd been under attack as well. Wow, he was really shitty with psychic powers. Why did he even have them if he couldn't control them? "So if you're not the yellow eyed demon, why appear as him?"

The thing disguised as a demon rolled his eyes in disgust. "Christ, you're stupid. I can't believe I'm being bested by a shaved ape as idiotic as you. He was your worst nightmare, you philistine. Haven't you figured it out yet? Everything you fear has been coming true. Was coming true. Until you fucked it all up ."

Yes: helpless, yellow eyed demon, being forced to choose who lives and who dies, Dean dead, Dean maybe a monster … but then it all went sideways. How? "Dean wasn't supposed to be next door to me, was he?"

"No! I told him he was dead, and he should have died. But you … I still don't know how you fucked that up. But you did. What are you anyway? Demon? You don't seem like a demi-god."

"I'm human." As an afterthought, he admitted, "I have some demon blood in me."

The thing scoffed. "Not normal demon blood, that's for damn sure. Powerful demon. You a half breed?"

That made Sam angry. It was bad enough being infested with demon blood and plagued by visions, but now he had to have this bastard giving him a hard time for it? "Is that what you are?"

Like he expected, the asshole bristled at this. "You should kneel before me, lesser. I am a god!"

Oh, great. He should have guessed that from his pomposity alone. "Where is Dean? And Ellen? What did you do to them?"

The god glared at him. He was still keeping his yellow eyed demon guise, but it didn't bother Sam anymore. He knew it was a lie. "I'll get back to them once I'm through with you. You can't beat me, boy."

Sam gestured to the empty, weirdly long hallway all around them. "Really? 'Cause I think I'm doing pretty good fighting you, and I didn't even know I was fighting you at the time. Who knows how much better I can do now that I know?" And Sam was getting a sense now of what he could do. With each pain he thought was some kind of psychic attack against him, he thought he could mentally push against it. It was hard to explain even to himself, but it was almost like a buried reflex. Something innate, inborn, a sense he didn't even know he had.

Now the god was giving him the death glare he gave to Dean earlier, but this time his eyes flashed gold, and Sam could feel something like a psychic knife twisting deep into his brain. The pain was immediate and terrible, and would have dropped him to his knees if he hadn't been expecting something like that. Gods weren't known for being reasonable. Sam staggered back instead, putting his hand on the wall to keep upright. The pain seemed to echo down his spine, through his nerves, and he had to remind himself he wasn't technically physical right now. It felt like it, though.

"What kinda god are you? The god of losers?" Sam taunted. Knowing who he was supposed to fight would have been nice. Not that it would help him much.

Now the bastard grinned, and it was an ugly thing, like he'd ever quite done it before. "I'm Phobitor, the god of nightmares. And I destroy from the inside."

Sam suddenly plunged into water, cold enough that he almost gasped and took in a lungful of the stuff. As he sank under the waves, he realized two things. First, the hallway had somehow transformed into the ocean, and Phobitor was still mostly in control of this reality. Second, Sam understood he'd been dropped into the ocean right in the middle of a school of great white sharks. They circled around him, much larger in person than he'd ever thought, their eyes flat and dark, their mouths open and bristling with teeth.

Fantastic. Phobitor wasn't playing fair. But did Sam really expect him to?


	9. Sea Legs

_**9 – Sea Legs**_

When Dean woke up on a tarp in a darkened room, he wasn't sure if he was still hallucinating or not. Asleep? Either. It was probably fifty-fifty.

He sat up, and was freezing. He was still wet from the rain, which either happened or didn't. He really couldn't tell if this was reality or not. He lifted up his shirt to look for a bullet hole, but nope, didn't find one. Good or bad?

Dean stood, eyes adjusting to the lack of light. And soon realized the liquid running down his right arm wasn't rainwater. He felt along his arm, until his fingertips felt the warmth, and he realized he had a cut on his arm. No, wait. When he was running in the woods, he got nicked by a bullet first, didn't he? Yeah, on his arm. He got shot a couple minutes after that …

Unless he didn't. Unless something on the bullet got into his bloodstream.

That's when he was drugged. Son of a bitch. He might have to assume everything after he was nicked by the bullet wasn't real. Which meant this, right? Ah fuck.

He felt along the wall until he found a light switch, but when he flicked it on, nothing happened. He should have known it wouldn't be that easy.

Dean remembered thinking he was dead, and being in that weird place with Sam … wait a second, didn't he break his thumb to get out of the cuffs? He squeezed both hands into fists, just to make sure he hadn't broken one, and he hadn't. That was good. But wait a minute. Where was Sam? And Ellen? And that yellow eyed demon that wasn't a yellow eyed demon? "Sam!" he shouted, finding the door in the dark. It was locked, but after throwing his shoulder into it three times, he finally heard the lock give way, and it clattered to the floor as the door swung open.

The hallway was dark too, but it was a small corridor, and he could hear the slightest percussive noise that meant it was raining. Points for reality. Or just a more realistic hallucination. "Sam!" he shouted again. "Ellen!"

There was a couple of seconds before he heard a muffled, "Dean?"

Ellen. "Where are you? Talk to me."

"Here, behind this goddamn door," she replied, and punctuated that with a kick that rattled the door in its frame. He found it easily, and discovered the doorknob wouldn't turn. It was sealed somehow. "Stand back."

The second time he slammed into the door, the jamb broke with an audible crack, and he all but fell in the door. Ellen was right there, grabbing his arm before he could hit the floor. She made a negative noise. "How are you still wet?"

"Because I actually am. It was pouring when they tagged me in the woods. It sounds like it's still pouring."

Ellen looked okay. A little tired maybe, but physically all right, which seemed like a bonus. "Is this reality?"

Dean hated to shrug, but he did. "Fifty/fifty, I figure." Ellen slapped him. She pulled it, but it still hurt like fuck. "Ow! What the hell was that for?"

She shook her own hand, like it stung her too. Good. "You felt it, right? I'm thinking it's reality."

"Except I felt myself get shot and die in the first go round. So I don't know if you proved anything beyond surprising strength."

"Damn it." She ran a hand through her hair, messing it up further. "Wait, how did you boys come here anyway?"

"Jo asked us to look for you." As soon as he said it, he knew it was the wrong thing to say.

Despite the darkness, he could see her eyes grow wide, and she seized him by the shoulders. "Tell me she didn't come with you." He took too long to reply, because she followed that up with, "What the hell were you thinking?"

"She wasn't letting us go without her."

"Goddamn it, Dean –"

"She's okay."

"You can't know that."

A fair point, but he wasn't about to concede that yet. "Yeah, I can. I let them get me so she could get away. I wasn't going to let anything happen to her. I failed Sam, I wasn't failing her too."

Ellen opened her mouth to say something, but that made her pause. She put a hand on his arm before she finally spoke. "Oh honey, your Daddy did a real job on you, didn't he? Not everything that happens is your fault."

His first impulse was to argue with her – what the hell was she implying about Dad? – but really, this wasn't a discussion Dean wanted to have, now or ever. "We need to find Sam and get out of here," he finally said, returning to the hallway.

"That thing, whatever it was, might still have him."

Dean felt his stomach plummet, but that fear had been gnawing at the back of his mind. "It seemed to be blaming him for … something."

"Yeah, I was unclear on what too."

Dean sighed as he considered his very slim options. Didn't know what it was, or why it blamed Sam, or what it was after. Didn't know how to hurt it if he found it. Damn it.

Ellen squeezed his arm, and said, "Let's go find him. We'll worry about the rest when we get to it."

Right. Good plan.

* * *

Sam closed his eyes, and tried to tamp down the terror. This wasn't real, right? Not real. No matter that a shark just swam close enough to him to cut his skin with its surprisingly rough flesh.

Cut? Oh, that wasn't good.

Sam mentally repeated this was not real, this was not happening, and since it didn't seem to be working, he told himself he was back in the last shitty motel room he and Dean stayed in. The one with the awful wallpaper, and the painting of a seascape that was so sad, it was almost existential and great. There was a lighthouse that looked like a cigarette stood on end. He remembered seeing the heavy brush strokes, and wondering if the artist had ever seen a lighthouse before, or had only had it described to him by people who saw one on a postcard once. Sam had worked up a whole comedy routine on this sad painting, which Dean didn't appreciate. He thought maybe they should just burn it in the parking lot, which Sam felt missed the whole point of its terrible grandeur.

He felt something firm beneath his feet, and opened his eyes. Yep, back in the motel room. The picture was about twice the size it had been, but that was okay. He was using it as his focal point to pull him out of the ocean. Shitty paintings could be a lifesaver – who knew?

"Did you think it would be that easy?" Phobitor's voice said, and suddenly the walls started to melt into new shapes, new configurations, and at first he wasn't sure what he was looking at. He was in a dark room, and there was a smell like … popcorn and sawdust? Weird.

He opened the door, and was greeted by calliope music as he saw nothing but clowns. Big clowns, small clowns, real clowns and clown dolls. Sam slammed the door, and leaned against it. "You son of a bitch."

He could hear the calliope music through the door now, as well as mocking guffaws that sounded forced enough to be truly sinister. The smell of cotton candy was cloying, and growing rapidly overpowering. Could he wish himself back into the shark infested ocean again?

Focal point. He needed to find something else to focus on so fear didn't overwhelm him, but God, that was tough. The thought that there were so many clowns outside the door made his skin itch, and suddenly something slammed against it, almost sending him flying across the room. "We all float down here," a voice shouted from the other side, and Sam made sure the door was locked before backing up. That wasn't a very clown like thing to say.

Wait. Yes it was. Pennywise the killer clown said that in Stephen King's _It_. Jesus Christ. "Pennywise?" he exclaimed, equal parts terrified and indignant. "Really? I hope King sues your ass." Although the odds Phobitor knew who Stephen King was or cared was astronomically low.

Dean actually tormented him with that book for a while, until he realized it genuinely upset him. So he took Sam out to the driveway, and let him burn the book. Although Sam hated the idea of burning books, the clown depicted on the mass market paperback cover burned a treat, and watching it curl up and fall to ash did make him feel a little better. Dean was big on destructive gestures that sometimes did help. Dean also said the book was okay, but too long, and ultimately pretty ridiculous. Sam took his word on that.

Focal point: Dean. Right. Dean never really had to fight any battles for Sam Even when he was a short, chubby eleven year old, he knew how to fight. Didn't like it, but he could. But there was that one kid, Hardy. Sam got his elbow dislocated and had to wear a sling for a while, which made fighting back infinitely harder. Hardy was a fourteen year old asshole who had it out for Sam since Sam physically shut up his piece of shit younger brother, and what better time to pick on an eleven year old than when he had one functional arm? But Dean heard about it.

Sam didn't tell Dean, and wasn't going to, because Dean would destroy him, and as big an asshole as he was, he didn't deserve quite that level of beat down. Hardy was on the football team, and Sam would have sworn he was already doing steroids, because he seemed abnormally large in more than one respect. He had at least fifty pounds of pure muscle on Dean, and was a couple inches taller. Even their Dad might have paused in fighting him.

But Dean went up to him when he was with three of his dirtbag friends in the parking lot, which seemed like it was the worst time imaginable. His friends were jocks too, and it felt like the start of some afterschool special where Dean would learn a lesson about hubris. This was especially true when they all started punching him as a group. Sam would find out later that Dean invited them to take the first punch, because he knew if he got hit first, everything after that was legally self-defense. Which proved he was planning to mess them up quite badly, and wanted to cover his ass.

After that, it became just the kind of nightmare that Sam was hoping to avoid … and was secretly thrilled by. Dean took out dirtbag number one with a single right upper cut that seemed to almost take his head right off, and then took out dirtbag number two with a side kick that broke his leg at the knee. For the rest of the fight he laid on the asphalt holding his leg and screaming. Dirtbag number three got a hard elbow to the gut that made him lose his lunch all over the hood of Hardy's car, and then Dean slammed his head down on it hard enough to leave a dent.

That left Dean and Hardy, and Hardy seemed angry that his friends went down "that easy", even though two were unconscious, and the third was screaming in obvious pain. That should have been a sign to call the fight, maybe call an ambulance too, But Dean was bleeding from a split lip, and his right eye was starting to swell from the first punches he took, and Hardy seemed to take that as a sign of weakness. Or so Sam guessed, because he couldn't imagine otherwise why he'd want to continue the fight against a "scrawny cocksucker" (Hardy's words) who'd just leveled all his friends in under a minute. Someone smarter would have realized that, size advantage be damned, he had no chance.

Dean was very much like a cat, as he played with his food. He went for painful but not crippling shots at first, such as to the stomach or the back of the head, love taps really, that infuriated Hardy and turned him as angry red as a tomato. His whole big head looked like a boil about to pop. Dean kept dancing away from his big ham handed swings, as Hardy telegraphed every move so clearly even Sam could see what they were going to be before he made them, and he found that part of fight training the most tedious. He could have shut Hardy down at any time, but he just wanted to humiliate him first.

Even though this was taking place after school, a crowd had formed to watch, and Sam had to get out of the car if he wanted to continue to see it. Part of him was disgusted, but the other part of him really wanted to see Dean kick Hardy's ass, so of course he joined the group.

Hardy was cussing out Dean with as many ugly insults as he could think of – mostly based around sexuality and scatology – but Dean just let it wash over him, smiling the whole time. Unless you were throwing magic spells or exorcizing a demon, words in a fight meant nothing. As Dad said, anyone who tried to distract you with words in a battle was admitting they were losing, and in fact had already lost. If you were planning what you were going to say, not what you were going to do, it was over.

Although it was fun to watch Hardy rendered so impotent, it was still kind of cruel, so Sam finally said, "Dean, would you knock it off and just finish him already?"

That caused Hardy to turn towards him, face crimson, sweat and spittle flying. "What d'you say you little fa –"

That was as far as he got before Dean gave him the right uppercut, his most devastating punch – then and now. He really stepped into it, putting all his weight and force behind it, and Sam watched a tooth fly out of Hardy's mouth as the rest of his bulk crashed to the asphalt, as gracelessly as an elephant seal. He was probably unconscious before his head bounced off the pavement, but there was no way to tell. "Winner and still champion," Dean crowed, raising his hands above his head in a Rocky pose. Tacky enough on his own, but the guy screaming in the background made it that much worse. Sam shook his head in disgust, and never let on exactly how pleased he was at this. Because no one human deserved to be hurt that much for being an asshole.

(But it felt so satisfying. Maybe next time they decided to shove a small kid in a locker they'd think twice.)

Dad was furious at Dean for unleashing on a bunch of kids who had no hope of competing with him, which was a fair point, and also Dean got suspended, which didn't matter since they left town the next day. But Dean refused to feel bad about it, because Hardy and his crew were such notorious bullying assholes. He was also happy that stomach acid probably ruined the paint job on Hardy's car.

Sam was no longer in motel hell. He was standing in the surprisingly baking hot sun of an early Idaho summer, watching fifteen year old Dean beat down bigger kids as a crowd of bored teens watched and called encouragement from a safe distance away. He could also see his younger eleven year old self, arm in a sling, watching with an odd combination of disgust and excitement. The bigger and older kids were ignoring him.

This was weird, being in one of your own memories. He could even smell fresh cut grass, as that was a hot spring, and the football field seemed to get mowed every two days. Standing there, Sam realized something. "You're trying to scare me? Are you aware of what a tall order that is, Phobitor? Do you have any idea of the life I've led?"

The parking lot disappeared, melting away until he recognized his bedroom at the place in Stanford. He heard a small dripping noise, beyond the louder one of the shower faucet, and knew it was blood dripping onto the coverlet from the ceiling. But he didn't look up. He didn't need to know Jess was up there, about to burst into flame. He lived it, replayed it endlessly in his nightmares. He knew it well. Sam turned instead, and saw what he guessed to be the real Phobitor in the doorway.

He was a tall, angular shadow, a jagged patch of sentient darkness. Inside him were gradations of darkness, deepest black to foggy grays, and any possible variation in between. He seemed to have bat like wings, and arms that ended in sharp points, like obsidian knives. No obvious face. Sam had to give him points for being disturbing, but he wasn't afraid. He'd been facing darkness all his life. "I'm not some mere monster, boy. I am a god. I am every bad thing rolled into one, and you cannot beat me." He had a voice akin to a dental drill, which seemed appropriate.

"Can't I? Then why am I not dead yet?" Sam remembered the book burning in the driveway, the way the cover curled up at the corner, and he could see it inside Phobitor's greater darkness. Neat trick.

"You haven't figured it out yet? I'm toying with you. Fear is best savored."

Sam shook his head. "No, doesn't track. All the people you've killed have died fast. "

"In your conception of time. Here it is very different."

Sam was willing to believe that. Dreams could feel like they took ages, and yet really only last seconds. The mind was a tricky thing. He took a step forward, and Phobitor seemed to drift backward slightly, until he was out in the main hall. Curious. Sam had this weird, inexplicable impulse to throw himself into Phobitior, into that vast, dark chasm. Would that be like feeding himself to the wolf?

Sam laughed then, as the penny finally dropped. The roof burst into flame over his head, it lit up the room and he could feel the heat pound down on him, but he ignored it all. Phobitor was trying to distract him, but he wouldn't fall for it this time. "Holy shit. Some god of fear you are."

"Do not mock me, mortal."

"I'm not mocking you. I'm spitting in your stupid, nonexistent face. "He grinned now, like he never allowed himself to do at Hardy's ass kicking, and it felt even better. "You're afraid of me. And you're right. You should be."

And Sam ran forward, and dove into the darkness that was Phobitor.


	10. Eraser

_**10 – Eraser**_

Dean and Ellen had just started down the hallway when they heard the rumbling outside. For a second, Dean thought it might be thunder, but no, it was a more regular, down to earth noise: a big truck. It sounded like it was right outside.

Too bad there were no obvious windows, or if there were, they were boarded up so well not a single speck of light got in. Combined with the fact that none of the light switches seemed to work, Dean was starting to think this thing, whatever it was, was allergic to light. He made a mental note of it, and when they hit a landing on the staircase and Dean saw boards that he knew were covering windows, he started prying them off. Probably meant nothing, but he felt like he should make a show of defiance if nothing else. And he got a sliver in his finger for the trouble, but that made him think maybe this was reality. Maybe he was awake. Ellen gave him a weird look at first, but eventually helped him. The window underneath was spray painted, but imperfectly. Light could still get through. Too bad there was no light to get in at the moment.

Every door they came to, they looked inside for Sam or a bad guy. Even though they were both looking to fight and burn off some of this frustrating energy, all the other rooms were empty. Sam – and whoever the bad guy was – didn't seem to be here. How was that possible?

The house they were in was not only dark, but had been empty for some time. Empty houses had a special scent of dust and mold and pests that was impossible to replicate. Something had to be ignored, neglected, to pick up this odor. No one had been here for some time, and no one was here now. He never thought they were dealing with a person, in spite of what Ash said about the drug cult, but now he knew there were no humans involved whatsoever. Humans came with their own assortment of smells, of associated cluttered and mess that even the neatest person couldn't avoid. If a person had been here recently, there would be traces, hints, clues. This was a monster of some kind. He still had no idea what, but something that hated the light worse than vampires.

They made it to the ground floor, not running in to anyone, but not finding any adequate weapons either. They could get makeshift ones, but they both understood that conventional weapons might not work, even if it wasn't a dream or hallucination or whatever.

The doors out were sealed. Again, it wasn't clear how, but Dean's attempts to break it down were unsuccessful this time. Whatever was holding the doors closed in this house had a much looser hold on the interior doors than the exterior doors.

After Dean nearly dislocated his shoulder, Ellen said, "Help me with this." She started pulling boards off a window in the living room, and he helped her. Once they uncovered a big enough patch of window, both he and Ellen grabbed furniture. She grabbed what was probably once an end table, and he found a metal bottomed lamp with a stripped cord. Whatever was holding the doors shut was holding the windows, but not as well. The glass finally cracked, spider web thin lines radiating from points of impact, and it shattered, letting in cool night air and big fat drops of rain. They could also see the truck now, which was idling in the front yard, and its headlights were on, so they couldn't make out more than a shape. Someone got out of the cab, and started walking towards the house, but only when the light caught the person's hair did they know who the driver was. They were blonde. "Jo?" Ellen exclaimed.

"Mom!"

They hugged through the now empty frame, and Dean felt a pang of jealousy. At least they were okay. Sam … he didn't know. Could he be held somewhere other than here? Why? "Oh honey, I was so worried," Ellen told her. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. You?"

"Good. What's with the big truck?"

Jo sighed, and stepped back. "According to Ash, we're fighting the nightmare god himself, Phobitor."

"Shit." Although in retrospect, Dean should have guessed god. The biggest dicks seemed to be gods. "What kills him?"

"He wasn't sure, but his best guess was light."

Ellen nodded. "That tracks with all the covered windows."

That was when Dean understood what was on the back of the truck. That was a great idea. "I don't suppose you have any portable lights, do you?"

"Yep. I stopped back at the hardware store." She had a backpack slung over one shoulder, and slid it down to her arm. She pulled out a big flashlight, and handed it to Dean. "Brightest one they had. I also got these from the Impala's trunk." She pulled out a flare, and handed one to him. Dean could have kissed her.

That was when they heard the cocking of a shotgun.

A lumpy shape moved from out of the shadows of the truck, and he said, "Hands where I can see them, girly girl. Don't make me blow away that beautiful ass."

Dean recognized the voice as belonging to that beardo from the bar, and he wanted to break his arm for that comment about Jo. But considering the look Ellen was giving him, Dean was his best shot here. She looked like she wanted to rip his balls off through his eye socket.

Jo kept her hands up, but she was sharing a look with Ellen that Dean recognized as silent shorthand, kind of like what he and Sam had. Maybe Ellen didn't want Jo to be a hunter, but they'd already established a tacit language that was an advantage in the field. Since Jo was blocking the bartender's view of Ellen, he couldn't see her reaching for the gun Jo had tucked in the waistband of her jeans. Dean decided to make sure he didn't see.

"You asshole," Dean snapped. The anger wasn't faked. "Why the hell are you working for this monster?"

Like he thought, the bartender turned his attention towards him. "He's not a monster. Not to me anyway. I had night terrors, I have since I was eight, and he took them away. Look, I'm not crazy about drugging people, but come on, man, people are shit."

Weirdly enough, Dean wasn't going to argue with him on that point. "They're killing people. Don't you care?"

He shrugged, and that's when Jo ducked to the side, and Ellen shot him.

She got him in the shoulder, which wasn't a kill shot, but it made him stumble back and drop his gun. He'd barely landed on his ass on the muddy lawn by the time Dean had jumped out the broken window and grabbed the shotgun. The bartender started reaching for it, and Dean slammed the butt of it in his face, knocking him out.

"I knew he was a skeeve," Jo said.

Dean handed her the shotgun. "See if you can't find a crowbar or something to pry the door open. Short of that, uncover all the windows and bust 'em. We need to make sure we can flood this house with light."

Both Jo and Ellen gave him an eerily similar skeptical look. It also pointed out that Ellen was kind of hot in that Sigourney Weaver way, and he really didn't need that thought right now. Or ever. "And what are you doing?"

"Looking for Sam, and hopefully acting as bait for Phobtitor to show his ugly face."

Ellen frowned. "We checked the house, we didn't find him."

"Did we look for a basement?" He jerked his head towards the kitchen. The headlights from the truck were illuminating it now, and they could now see there was a door next to the old fashioned refrigerator. It was recessed, and seemed designed to be barely noticeable. Perfect place for basement access, and why wouldn't you have a basement, especially if you were a creep who hated light with a vengeance? It was probably his base of operations. Which begged the question why he had separated Sam from the rest of them and took him down there. What the fuck was he doing to him?

"Shit," Ellen said. "I'm coming with you."

"No. Stay here, clear the windows, and get ready. I may come running with hell on my heels, so I need you both ready to hit him with all the light you got."

She fixed him with a look so maternal he could have hugged her, but he knew better than that. "You may need help."

Dean shook his head. "He's my brother. Death itself couldn't stop me from getting him." He meant it too.

Ellen didn't like it, but she knew he was serious, and simply nodded. "You need help, shout."

"Yeah. Just be ready." He squared his shoulders and approached the door with a flashlight in his hand, and a flare tucked into the front pocket of his jeans. It felt weird not to have a knife or a gun, but if only light would work, they'd be useless. Hell, light might be useless. They were just working on faith now, which Dean hated. But he didn't have much of a choice.

He hit the door once, twice, and it felt like it wasn't going to give, but Dean was furious, and it filled him with some good old, spite fueled adrenaline, and finally some of the old wood gave way on the third hit. He caught the edge of the jamb, so he didn't fall.

The broken door swung open on a narrow staircase that seemed to descend straight into Stygian blackness, something shapeless and somehow darker than black. Nothing good was down there. His skin got goosebumps for no reason, and then he realized something in him was recoiling. His lizard brain was screaming at him to run. Phobitor radiated bad intent; he created a miasma of fear that you reacted to, even with the lack of other stimuli. No wonder he needed the drugs to help bring people to him. They might not be able to bear being in his presence otherwise. He could feel his legs start to tremble.

Dean swallowed back his rising gorge, and told himself no. He wasn't leaving without Sam. Bottom line. Let the bastard throw all the fear at him he wanted. Dean had spent his life shoving aside his feelings and just doing what he had to do. This was no different.

He switched on the flashlight, which seemed insufficient to penetrate the gloom, and took his first step into Hell.


	11. Four Crows

_**11 – Four Crows**_

Sam felt like he was falling and rising at the same time, a disorienting sensation his mind didn't know how to interpret. He tried grabbing at the darkness, but he pulled away handfuls of something oily and bloody. Could have been blood, but he guessed it was something else entirely.

Reality coalesced and he hit a floor, and when he stood up, he saw he was in a hospital hallway. In one open doorway, he could see the doctor using defibrillator paddles on a dying Dean, with the drone of the heart monitor flat-lining in the background. Across the hall, in another open doorway, their father was lying dead on the floor. "This was really what you're most of afraid of, aren't you? Being alone, being the last one left." Phobitor said. He wasn't visible, but he didn't need to be.

"But I'm not, am I?" Sam ignored what was going on in Dean's room, as the reality changed ever so slightly. Dean never fought the reaper, and the doctor was now pronouncing a time of death for him. Even though Sam knew that wasn't what happened, he still felt a twinge in his gut. He really didn't like thinking about those days after the car accident. That was like a real life nightmare, top to bottom.

"You're forgetting the best part," Phobitor taunted him.

Sam shook his head. "There was no best part."

But the scene changed, and he was suddenly sitting in a chair off the waiting room, head in his hands, ouija board set up in his lap. He'd just "talked" with spirit form Dean – and wasn't it a shame live Dean had no memory of that – and realized Dean was doomed. No one shook a reaper who was genuinely coming for you. Dean was going to die. It was just a matter of when, not if. He had to leave the room so Dean didn't see him getting teary eyed over it, although he could have followed him, how would he know? Dean couldn't die. His mind went to many selfish places, including who was going to keep Dad and him from killing each other – Dean had always been a buffer – but the most selfish place was the thought _I don't have to do this anymore_. No more hunting, no more life on the road, no more dealing with his Dad. He could just leave it to him, and go back and try to pick up the pieces of his life at Stanford. He felt such a relief at this thought he forgot to be miserable for a moment.

But that was precisely how long it lasted. A moment. Because he knew he would never do it. It was a momentary pipe dream, something that could have happened but most definitely wouldn't have. Sam scoffed, looking around for the patch of shadow that could only be Phobitor. "You picked out a single second of my life. Boy, you're desperate, aren't you?"

The lights started going out, down both sides of the hallway, until only the rooms with dead Dean and dead Dad were illuminated. Sam tried to look at neither. "You're a puzzle, boy, but you're a mortal. I'm a god. You can't beat me."

"So you say. But I haven't seen any proof of that yet."

Sam kind of knew that was an unwise thing to say, but he couldn't help it. So he was only partly surprised when his Dad suddenly got up and tackled him straight through the wall.

He felt his consciousness reel at the blow before he even hit the floor, his Dad kneeling on his chest and pummeling him in the face. "You are a fool, boy. You can't hurt me, and now you're stuck in here with me."

Sam was telling himself this was in his own head, and the punches really didn't hurt … except they did, very much. It wasn't working like it did the last time. Sam got his arms up to block the punches, but they were inhumanly strong. As if to remind him what he was dealing with, his Dad's eyes were just holes in his skull, where black energy leaked out in tendrils of darkness.

And suddenly Sam wondered if he'd made a huge mistake.

* * *

Dean was not sure how going down a set of rickety stairs into a basement seemed to have become the longest couple of minutes in his life, but it had.

By the time he reached the bottom, he had sweat running down his back and down his face, like he'd been physically dragging the house with him every step. His stomach was a knotted mess, and his shoulders were so tight he could feel the bones straining against them. He became self-conscious about his breathing at some point, and found himself either unconsciously holding his breath or verging on hyperventilation. Every thirty seconds or so, he was sure he was going to vomit.

This was fear, and him doing his damnedest to suppress it. Dean had paused half a dozen times, not sure he could keep going, his heart pounding so hard he was fairly certain he was having a heart attack. But he pushed himself onward, despite it all, because he had to get to Sam, and he wasn't going to let Phobitor keep him from doing it.

But holy shit, was it a million times harder than he thought it would be. Dean was holding his flashlight so tight that his fingers had gone numb, and he thought he might have to peel them off. Had he ever been this scared in his entire life? He didn't think so. He thought he might pass out.

The flashlight, as bright as it was, could barely punch through the gloom. It seemed solid at times, but he reached out and nothing was there. So it was more of the fear, or his imagination helping the bastard out. He didn't like that idea at all. He was betraying himself somehow, and that sucked worse than almost everything else.

Finally he hit the basement, and while he was relieved to reach the floor, Dean knew the real battle was just beginning. He had to find Sam, get him out, and somehow not get them both killed, which shouldn't have been something he had no plan for, but the extent of his plan was grab and run. Was that even workable, considering how long it took him to get down the stairs? Dean tried not to dwell on how screwed they were, and pressed forward.

Once again, the light barely tunneled through the darkness, giving him the ability to maybe see one foot in front of him, and Dean considered the risks of calling out to Sam. If Phobitor was darkness, then there was the possibility he was all around him, therefore he knew Dean was here. He'd hardly be sharing news. "Sam!"

There was no reply, but he heard something like a whisper graze his ear, along with a cold feeling that raised goosebumps on all his exposed flesh. Phobitor definitely knew he was here, and he was not happy.

Good. He intended to make him even more upset, if he could only figure out a way how.

* * *

Sam managed to buck off the Phobitor version of his Dad, and quickly rolled to his feet, running out of the hospital hallway and concentrating on being anywhere else but an enclosed space. Suddenly he found himself on an anonymous stretch of road, a place that could have been anywhere. The sun was up, and there were trees on both sides of the road. He expected to see the Impala somewhere, but he didn't.

"There's nowhere to run," Phobitor said. He was still in the form of his Dad, with those dark sockets of energy that made it look like someone took his eyes out with a melon baller. "This is my domain, and you are trapped here with me."

Sam spit out a mouth full of blood, and tried to ignore the throbbing in his jaw, that almost matched the throbbing in his head. He was starting to feel light headed, but he tried to tell himself it wasn't true, it wasn't real. So far, that strategy hadn't gained any traction. "If you could actually kill me, I'd be dead by now," Sam pointed out. "I think it's more of a stalemate, don't you?"

Phobitor scowled at him. "You refuse to accept the truth. You're alone, boy. You're freak enough to fight back, for a while, but not freak enough to withstand me. I'm going to hollow you out and use you as a puppet. What do you say to that?"

Phobitor started stalking towards him, and Sam started backing up, not sure what his best play was. He imagined he had his gun, and he reached into his pocket and found it. He put a couple slugs in his chest, and Phobitor didn't even blink. Damn it.

Sam had backed up to the edge of the road, and didn't see running into the trees, with its myriad shadows, as a good idea. But what else could he do?

That's when he very faintly heard Dean call his name.

Phobitor stopped, as Sam looked around. That wasn't the god's doing, was it? He seemed as startled by it as Sam was. Dean wasn't dead. It probably meant Ellen wasn't either. Were they trying to find him in the real world? Sam idly wondered where he was. "What did you say about me being alone again?"

Phobitor lunge at him, tackling him around the waist and dragging him down to the asphalt. Sam clocked him with a right hook to the face, but he didn't react to it as he threw his own punches, catching Sam in the jaw. "By the time your brother finds you, your body will belong to me. How do you think we should kill him, Sam?"

Sam grabbed his arm as it came in for another punch, and twisted the wrist all the way around. It cracked with a noise like a shotgun blast, but Phobitor didn't react. He leered down at him, despite the fact that his right hand was now facing the wrong way. "My world, my rules," the god said, as his hand turned back to its unbroken state.

Oh shit. He hoped Dean and Ellen hurried the fuck up, because his head was starting to feel like a balloon on the verge of popping. And he had the sinking feeling that wasn't just a metaphor.

* * *

Dean walked blindly around the darkness plagued basement, until he literally walked into something. It was just under knee height, and it almost made him fall over, but he just barely managed to keep his balance. Now that he'd nearly fallen on it, his flashlight was able to pick it out of the dark, and he saw it was a skeletal metal bed frame. And the only thing on it was a person. "Sammy," Dean said, moving the flashlight up to confirm he was still alive.

He must have been, because blood was streaming out of both his nostrils like a dam had been breached. He was unconscious and laying on his back, so it was probably a minor miracle that he hadn't drowned in his own blood yet. What the hell had happened to him? Dean's first thought was broken nose, but it didn't look injured.

He was still trying to figure out how he was going to get him out of here when a force manifested itself and threw him across the room. Dean collided painfully with a concrete wall before sliding down to the floor in utter darkness. The flashlight had been left with Sam, and it seemed like that tiny beacon of light was disappearing. Coincidentally, Dean was also finding it hard to breathe, like the blackness was solid and compressing him.

Blindly he reached for the flare in his pocket, and popped the cap before igniting it. The flame flared up, chemical and white, and the darkness all around him seemed to disappear. And Dean knew why, because the light of it hurt his eyes as well. "How do you like that, asshole?" He could breathe too, which was a nice bonus.

Dean pushed himself painfully to his feet, holding the flare like a torch. It wouldn't be too bright for long, so he had to move while he could. When he returned to the bed, he dropped the flare on the floor, so he was still within the halo of its light. He managed to heft Sam over his shoulder, but it was a process, because he was so big he threatened to collapse Dean under his bulk. It wasn't that he couldn't carry the weight, it was just so awkwardly spread out. Not for the first time, he thought Sam's height was fucking ridiculous. "If you drag your head on the floor that's your fault," Dean said, finally getting Sam over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. It still felt like Sam might unbalance him at any moment.

Dean did manage to grab the flashlight, for what little good it would do, and turned towards the stairs, but not before kicking the flare into the crushed remains of a cardboard box he spied in the corner. "Let there be light," he said, as the cardboard smoldered, then burst into flame. A thing allergic to light should never have kept anything flammable in its house.

Dean managed to get half way up the stairs before he heard a noise behind him. It was a grumbling noise, like a big dog angry that it had been woken up from a nap. Smoke was starting to clog the air, as the flames found more fuel, and the flare spewed like a person smoking an entire pack of cigarettes at once. That was just one of many reasons you weren't supposed to use a flare indoors.

He tried breathing shallowly as he climbed the steps, fear no longer his number one concern. Dean also felt something warm and wet on the back of his leg, and figured it was Sam's blood. Who bled that much from their nose? What the hell was going on?

Dean was full on coughing by the time he reached the top, his eyes watering from the acrid smoke, and when he tried the knob on the door – hadn't he left it open, and oh yeah, broken – he found it wouldn't turn. The door seemed to be welded in its frame again. "Did you really think it would be that easy?" a voice whispered in his ear.

Well, fuck. Dean had hoped it would be. He should have known better.


	12. Loom

_**12 – Loom**_

When Jo first smelled the smoke, she thought the truck engine was overheating. She needed a big truck just for the equipment in the back, but she was hoping Phobitor wouldn't be able to drain the energy from it so easily if it was sizable. She didn't really know, though.

But it was her mother who pinpointed it first. "Is there smoke coming from the basement?" Working together, with Jo using a crowbar on the outside and Ellen using one on the inside, they managed to get the front door open, although really they just broke the shit out of the jamb. But that still counted, as the door couldn't stay shut.

Ellen went to check it out, and only now could Jo see a few wisps of smoke coming from under the basement door. Wait a second – hadn't Dean left the door open?

Now there was a pounding on the door, and her Mom didn't bother trying to wedge it open, she just went to work on the doorknob, using the pry bar to break it off. It fell to the floor with a clatter, and smoke poured out the hole in the door. She opened it and Dean all but fell out, Sam thrown over his shoulder. "Did you light the basement on fire?" her Mom asked him.

After he took a moment to cough, Dean shrugged. "Had to do something."

Jo could see light flickering beyond the broken door, and thought nothing of it, except, as she looked away, she noticed a weird movement within it. Sort of like there was a wavering shadow blocking out some of the light. "Guys, move!" she shouted, running for the truck. She hoped she got the electrical set up correct, or this was going to be a whole lot of nothing.

Jo didn't have a great vantage point from the back of the truck, especially maneuvering such a huge piece of equipment, but she shouted "Stand clear!" as what looked like an amorphous black void had followed Dean up from the basement. Jesus Christ, how the fuck was that a god?

She flipped the switches, and the spotlight came to life with an electronic crackled. The rain literally sizzled as it fell into the massive beam of light, which was too painful for her to see even indirectly, and the heat it was giving off was nuts. The guy at the equipment rental place advised her to use gloves, because the metal could heat up after a while, but fuck it, she wasn't going to have it on that long. It would either work or it wouldn't.

Jo blindly aimed it at the front of the house, and hoped it was enough, because they had no plan B.

* * *

Sam knew something had changed, but not what. Phobitor became distracted, but he was looking off at nothing. So Sam took the opportunity to try and gain an upper hand.

He threw him off, but turned that into a move, so he rolled on top of him and planted his fist in his face again and again. "Don't you dare call me a freak," he said, punctuating each word with a punch.

Phobitor attempted to block him but failed, and yet somehow, Sam found himself thrown farther down the road, as if he weighed nothing. "You are a freak, boy, and while I'd love to rip you apart and find out what makes you tick, I don't have the time." Phobitor stood still while the landscape changed around him, the sky growing midnight dark, and the trees withdrawing into the soil, while the asphalt crumbled into gravel. "You should be thanking me, you know. I don't have much of a gift for prophesy, but what little I can see, your good years are all behind you. You are on a bullet train to hell. You and everyone around you. You are the anti-Midas. Everything you touch turns to shit."

"You think you're telling me something I don't know?" Sam tried to change the landscape, ignoring the sick pulse in his head, but this time it didn't work. Phobitor was right. He could withstand him, but ultimately he couldn't win, unless something changed.

And something changed.

Phobitor staggered, as if hit by an invisible fist, and grabbed his own head, screaming the whole time. Sam had no idea what he was reacting to, but the landscape seemed to hiccup, as if a tremor was breaking up its reality, and he charged Phobitor, imagining he had a machete. At least he managed to make that happen, because he felt it solid and cold in his hand. He swung it as soon as he was within reach.

It should have taken off his head, but maybe because it was still his realm, it didn't. Sam sunk the blade into his neck about half way, before it became stuck. "Bastard!" Phobitor shoved him, but this time Sam barely stumbled back a step. He was hurting and weak. Sam couldn't finish him off in here. But he could distract him, weaken him. Whatever Dean was doing, it was working, so he hoped he kept going.

Sam imagined he still had his gun, so he did, and he shot him several times in the chest as he continued staggering backwards, the sky melting like watercolors in the rain. "My premonition skills are a little better than yours," Sam said, reloading. "Especially when it comes to death. And I think your times just about up, Phobitor."

The god removed his hands from his head long enough to sneer at him, and that's when Sam shot him in the face.

* * *

Dean knew Jo had a spotlight in the back of the truck, the kind they used at movie premieres or car lots, but what he hadn't known was how bright it actually was. It was like a second sun had sprung to life just outside the house, and even with his eyes closed, the light blared through his eyelids like they'd been removed.

Instinctively he ducked down, and put Sam on the floor as he took meager cover from the light behind the kitchen counter. "C'mon, Sammy, wake up," Dean said, trying to blink away the after images that was currently rendering him half blind. But he knew Sam was still out cold, as he was dead weight, and he was still bleeding from the nose like he had some ebola based cold.

Ellen had sunk to the floor right across from him, and she had her hand over her eyes, trying to block out some of the glare that now filled the kitchen along with smoke. Dean blinked some of his sight back, and he saw that black void of Phobitor, squirming as if the light was acid.

Although it was hard to imagine any more light would help, the thing simply wasn't dying fast enough for him. He leaned over, and asked Ellen, "Gotta flare?"

She was looking down at Sam, who had a small puddle of blood already forming under his head. At least Dean had turned him on his side so he didn't choke on it. "Is he all right?"

Dean was forced to shrug. Something was going on with him, but it was undoubtedly tied to Phobitor. If they could get rid of him, maybe it would stop. "Dunno. Still have your flare?" Ellen pulled it out of her coat pocket and held it up. "Light that son of a bitch up."

She gave him a skeptical look, probably because a flare could hardly compete with the blaring, overwhelming spotlight, but she shrugged, pulled off the cap, and lit it before tossing it under the spasming dark spot in the kitchen. It reacted, staggering backward, as the flare added even more smoke to the kitchen.

The darkness seemed to curl inward, like a burning page, and it seemed to compress until it simply vanished, a dark splotch that disappeared like an afterimage in the eye.

"Was that it?" Ellen asked. She almost sounded disappointed. Dean was forced to shrug, but he totally agreed with her. At least demons made an exit. This was anti-climactic, assuming it really was over. Dean didn't know if he should trust it.

The fire was starting to lick up the staircase, and the smoke was getting heavy, so he hefted Sam once more, and left the house, eyes still closed in a pointless battle against the spotlight. Ellen followed him, and helpfully shouted, "Turn it off!"

Jo obeyed, killing the spotlight, but Dean was still momentarily blind as he tried to blink away those afterimages.

The cool rain felt good, and the air was clean enough that Dean was finally able to get rid of the acrid smell of smoke that seemed stuck in his nose. He knelt down on the lawn to put Sam down, hoping all the water would help startle him awake.

It seemed to work. He'd barely put Sam down on the grass before he groaned and moved his hand weakly, as if trying to shield his face from the drizzle. "What the fuck ..?" he asked, eyes fluttering open. He sat up in time to cough, and spit out some blood.

"I could ask you the same question," Dean said. Had they figured out exactly how Sam had helped them escape from Phobitor? And why hadn't he? Was this related to his psychic thing? It must have been. Sam was a born Dreamscaper. Who knew? It would have been handier if he was a born Scanners guy, but you couldn't have everything.

"What the hell happened back there?" Ellen asked. For some reason, she was over at the bartender's unconscious body. "How did … why did … anything. Give me an answer for anything."

Sam looked at her blankly, and then ran his hand beneath his nose, and seemed surprised to see blood. "I don't know what you guys are talking about. What happened?"

Oh fantastic. They were never going to get any answers.

* * *

Sam hated lying, but it seemed like the best thing to do, at least for the moment. He didn't know how he did what he did; he wasn't even completely sure what he had done. He had no doubt it was linked to his psychic thing.

But when he regained consciousness, he felt dizzy and lightheaded, even though the throbbing in his temples had stopped. He tried not to show it, but Dean must have asked him if he was okay half a dozen times. It was funny how he and Dean would still casually lie to each other, and yet always know when the other was lying. It was one of those games people like them seemed to instinctively play. Lying and pretending everything was okay when it wasn't was buried deep in the Winchester genes. Denial worked, until it simply didn't.

Ellen had pulled out the wallet of the traitorous bartender, just to read his address. They paid a visit to his place on the way back to the equipment rental place, and found his stash of mystic drugs. After double checking to make sure he had none of the more arcane ingredients on site, they flushed it all, and Dean wrote in marker on his bedroom wall: _Don't even think about pulling this shit again. We know who you are, and where you live. This is your only chance._ Dean was great at extremely vague threats that still sounded super sinister. Dean had actually wanted to kill him, and Ellen almost agreed with him, but in the end she decided it was better to leave him with a concussion and a guilty conscience, if he even had one. If the guy did do something like this again, Sam didn't know how he'd stop Dean from killing him. He didn't think he would. Ellen would probably help him. Sam was kind of glad Ellen and Dean hadn't encountered each other earlier, under different circumstances, because he could see them both encouraging each other's darker impulses.

Eventually, Ellen and Jo drove off, returning to the Roadhouse, although not before they got goodbye hugs. When Ellen was hugging Sam, she whispered in his ear, "You watch yourself now." Maternal concern, or a warning? Maybe a mix of both. It was kind of her not to let Dean know. How much did she suspect? Had to be quite a bit, maybe even more than Dean did.

He couldn't have brought Ellen back from the drug, or saved Dean from falling for a death illusion. He didn't have that kind of power. Sure, some of the other yellow eyed demon's "kids" had super-human abilities, but Sam wasn't one of them. He had death premonitions, which he could neither control or even tolerate half the time. Of the superpowers available, he had the lamest, most useless one. And in a weird way, that was a comfort.

It told Sam he wasn't inhuman. Freaky, sure, maybe, not something other than human. But to psychically fight a god? What the fuck did that mean? It couldn't have meant anything good.

Dean thought they should stay over, figured Sam needed to rest – save him from Dean in mother hen mode – but Sam finally convinced him they needed to get back on the road, because he was fine. Dean kept giving him this look, like he knew it wasn't fine but was kind of afraid of what it might mean, so rather than face that, Dean chose silence. Good old Dean. He could pick his battles sometimes.

By the time they checked into the next cheap motel another town over, Sam had half convinced himself he'd done nothing. Phobitor just decided to play with him while Dean, Ellen, and Jo killed Phobitor, but he couldn't shake those last seconds – minutes? Hours? – in that mindscape with Phobitor. He could almost feel his agony as the landscape twisted and collapsed in on itself, the light in the outer world burning him almost to bone. And Sam shot him again and again, making whatever passed for a skull collapse in on itself, just like the landscape around them.

Did he actually help kill Phobitor? Part of him wanted to believe it, and part of him feared believing it. What did that make him if that were true?

He waited until Dean was asleep, and snuck out of their motel room. He was too wired and haunted to sleep. Sam went to the nearest bar, had a vodka and soda, and contemplated what this could possibly mean.

Andy and his brother had weird, almost godlike powers. It was fucked up and scary, and Sam was actually glad he didn't have that power, as much as making people doing anything he told them to do sounded neat. It was just a power like that was asking to be abused. Little good could come of it. At least his power was relatively useless, except for trying to prevent deaths, when possible.

But what if it was simply because most of his power was internalized? What if, like Andy's psychotic brother, he explored his powers more, pushed them, flexed them and built them up like a muscle. What could he do with them then? Could he, say, win a psychic battle with a god?

That was just fucking crazy. Phobitor was weak from the light, and Sam helped distract him and scattered his forces. He didn't help kill him. He just kept him too busy to stop Dean, Ellen, and Jo. That was it.

(So how did he explain the rest of it?)

Sam gulped down his drink, and ordered another, as he resolved to try and drink his thoughts away. Much to his surprise, someone sat next to him at the bar, and said, "You wanna talk about it?"

Sam sighed, and looked over at Dean, who looked tired, but not unduly so. He hadn't been faking being asleep – Sam was pretty sure he could tell the difference – but he must have woken up shortly after he left. And come looking for him. "No."

Dean nodded, and signaled to the bartender. "Double whiskey, neat." As he dug out his wallet, Dean said, "I don't know what you did back there, and I don't know how you did it. But I don't care. You did good. The rest of it doesn't matter."

"It does, Dean."

He shook his head, as he threw his cash on the bar. "Only if you want it to. I'm happy to just chalk it up to you being a bad ass Winchester."

Sam eyed him warily. Dean was giving him an out here, saying he was willing to pretend that it wasn't anything major, anything inhuman and freakish. He was willing to let it go, if he was willing to. This was a little bothersome, because it must have scared Dean a lot if he was willing to forget about it. Or maybe he was just being a protective big brother again. If Sam was a freak, Dean was happy to pretend he was a freak too, just to pull some of the heat off of him. Maybe the truth was somewhere in the middle.

Sam considered it, as the bartender brought Dean his drink, and Dean took a surprisingly healthy gulp, even though he was only half awake. Maybe the taste was going to wake him up further. "What if it means … what if -"

Dean turned towards him, giving him his serious face. "Stop. We can think up a billion what if scenarios, and they don't help."

"What if I'm getting worse, or –"

"What the hell does that mean, getting worse? You should be fucking proud, man. You kicked a god's ass. Can you think of a better epitaph?"

He grimaced, trying not to smile. Well, when he put it that way, it sounded pretty cool. "I guess not."

Dean held up his half full glass. "We killed a nightmare god. Go team."

Sam reluctantly raised his glass in response, then slugged back what he had left. The vodka was a bit of the cheaper brand, so it kicked like a mule, and he probably had lost a bit of blood too, which didn't help matters. His dizziness came back, and he almost fell off his barstool, except Dean caught his shoulder and held him upright.

"Still a lightweight," he teased.

Sam was about to protest, but then decided not to. What was the point?

Besides, if Dean was willing to let this all go, Sam might as well do it too.

* * *

The End


End file.
